Product Life Cycle

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The Product Life Cycle Theory The Product Life Cycle (PLC) Theory was developed in 1966 by Raymond Vernon (Ayal, 1981) with the belief that all products when released onto the market, take on a sequential and pre-determined pattern of development which occurs in five stages; development, introduction, growth, maturity and decline (Baines et al., 2011). As products progresses through each distinctive stage, sales and profits will continuously rise and fall, however, it is thought that every product has a limited lifespan, which can be seen in Figure 1 below. The PLC concept has remained popular since the 1960’s due to its intuitive logic of the product lifespan. The biological analogy it has to the life cycle of living forms has considerable descriptive value when used as a systematic frame-work for explaining the dynamics of a specific market (Day, 1981). Although products have a limited life cycle, there are many ways to expand the existence of an existing product such as identifying new applications, recruiting new users, and developing new attributes (Baines et al., 2011). Fig 1. The Product Life Cycle The PLC begins with the research and development phase (not shown in fig. 1). Here, the product is in pre-market testing mode and is not yet released for general sales. This phase is used to identify and attract the right customers which are the innovative buyers. The earliest consumers or “innovators” are typically very well informed, risk takers who are open to buying a new product usually at a higher price and will make up 2.5% of the total market for new products (Robertson, 1967). For these consumers, having the newest products before everyone else and being seen as trend-setters is very important to them. It is critical to attract innovators which will begin the marketing pattern of a new product. The introductory phase involves the product launch
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