Product Lifecycle

Nearing the end of my blog and looking back I briefly touched on the Product Life Cycle in my second post. I thought i would bring you a quick post expanding on how a new products life develops and changes during its introduction into the market. It is of major importance to a company such as Apple or Microsoft because it allows them to identify when the product is reaching the end of its life and a new product needs to be ready to be put into the market. The process is called The Product Life Cycle, which is shown in the Diagram below:

According to jobber (2010: 355) no matter how wide the product mix, both product lines and individual brands need to be managed over time. A useful tool for conceptualizing the changes that may take place during that is called the Product Life Cycle. Apple are a good company to show how they link their products to the Product life cycle, for example looking at the Iphone there has been five different versions of the phone each new product has been released as the other started to enter into the decline stage of this process. 

However some companies choose not to let their products enter the decline stage and will change their strategy to prolong its life within the maturity stage, therefore extending the product life cycle. this is shown in the diagram below: 

There are a number of ways a company can do this, for example update the product or its software, Sony did this with the PlayStation 2 as it began to fall into decline they updated its software and this therefore prolong the interest within the games console although it will not last forever and new innovations need to be released which resulted in the release of the PlayStation 3 and resulted in the end of the PlayStation 2.....

Jobber. D, 2010, Principles and Practice of Marketing, Sixth Edition, McGraw-Hill Education

Website: Product Life Cycle Extension

http://mgmt280.blogspot.com/2010/01/product-life-cycle-extension.html, 

[Internet] Accessed 17/01/12

Website; Pricing Professional Services & Product Life Cycle

http://liveseysolar.com/pricing-professional-services-and-product-life-cycles-case-study

[Internet] Accessed 17/01/12