What Is The Product Life Cycle How Can It Be Used

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Question 1) what is meant by the Product Life cycle? Using examples, explain how it can be used to illuminate management decisions about products. The product life cycle is the stages that a new product goes through when entering the market place. The product life cycle usually has four stages: introduction, growth, maturity and decline. Or alternatively sometimes a fifth stage is added in prior to the introduction termed development the pharmaceutical industry are likely to include a devlopment stage into their product life cycle as there is usually a significantly large amount of time spent on developing pharmaceutical products. The product life cycle is a much used but also much criticised model. ADD In Diagram of typical product life cycle. The introduction stage is characterised by uncertainty with the product and a product is often launched on a small-scale production and is usually very experimental and skill intensive. This stage sees few pioneer customers and growth of the product is slow due to buyer ignorance, uncertainty in industry standards and not enough buyers to demonstrate the product and start the bandwagon effect. This stage of the product life cycle encourages advertising aimed at informing ‘ignorant’ potential customers. The second stage growth sees a rapid increase in sales of a product, which is due to buyer inertia being overcome. Buyers now know more about the product and are understand what it is and what it does. This stage also sees the bandwagon effect coming into place. Prices of the product are beginning to fall and the industry standards become clearer and there is less risk involved. The third stage is the maturity stage, here the product is well understood by consumers and producers however there is increasing competition along with a decline in the number of competitors. There is little growth in the market as saturation in

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