Discussion- Ch12 - Coursework Example

Product Life Cycle and Marketing Product life cycle entails the four stages of a product in the market from the introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. The different stages have varying characteristics resulting in the need for the company to have different marketing strategies to meet product development. The introduction stage describes the launching of the product with the prices being low and profits near zero owing to the lack of market understanding and acceptance by the consumers. The marketing strategies at the introduction stage are aimed at informing the public/consumers of the new product to build the market and build demand.

The growth stage involves a high rate of revenue increase owing to access to additional market and awareness by the customers. Marketing at the growth stage include development of new product features and packaging, increased advertising, and setting of high prices owing to high demand. Entry by competitors to the market reduces revenue growth towards the end of the growth stage. The maturity stage is reached when sales growth decreases but owing to high brand presence advertising is reduced.

Product similarity is high reducing differentiation with the marketing mix done through sales promotions, price reductions, produce feature modifications, and innovative distribution channels aimed at extension of product lifecycle and maintenance of market share. Saturation of the market, technological obsolete products, and changes in customer tastes results in sales decline. The other features of the decline stage include increasing costs from reduced production volumes causing lack of profitability.

Marketing at the decline stage includes reduction in product offerings, lowering of prices, little promotion expenditure, and selective distribution. After reading Liang’s discussion, I believe he articulates the concepts in product lifecycle well though he does not provide the marketing techniques for use at the introduction stage. The discussion does not state the marketing strategies in the growth and maturity stages but rather treats the two distinct stages together in terms of marketing.

The decline stage marketing strategies are not well analysed. Overall the discussion is informative on the product life cycle but not clear on the different marketing strategies applied at various stages of the product lifecycle.