Product Lifecycle by Amazon Sr PM, Hina Kamra

The product life cycle is the amount of time a product spends in the market from birth, from inception to the decline or expansion of the product. The product life cycle is directly correlated with the time, sales, and growth spent on each stage of the product life cycle. 

What are the Product Life Cycle stages? 

The product life cycle is the amount of time a product spends in the market from birth, from inception to the decline or expansion of the product. The product life cycle is directly correlated with the time, sales, and growth spent on each stage of the product life cycle.

What are the Product Life Cycle stages?

1. Product Development

Product development stage is identifying customer need or problem, market research, competitor analysis, identifying potential growth, testing and validating assumptions, and translate into a minimal viable product.

  • Customer expectations

  • Product strategy

  • Building requirements

  • Investment costs increases

  • High development time

  • Testing prototypes

2. Introduction

At this stage a product is launched in the market. Companies spent time and invests in building customer awareness, marketing, promotions, and placement of the product.

  • Target early adopters

  • Slow sales growth

  • Pricing strategy

  • High costs

  • Distribution model

  • Brand building

3. Growth

The stage of the Product Life cycle where product sales, revenues and profits begin to grow as the product becomes more popular and accepted the market.

  • Promoting product

  • Economies of sales

  • High sales and revenue

  • Increase in competition

  • Gains customer acceptance

  • Maintaining product quality

4. Maturity

The stage in the product life cycle where product reaches its maximum potential, gained extensive acceptance, competition is high, and sales stabilizes.

  • Product gets saturated

  • Profit margin decreases

  • Tough competition

  • Price war

  • Differentiation in marketing

  • Product development

5. Decline

At the end of Product Life Cycle the sales of the products will decline. This can be due to changing customer needs, new trends, technological advances, innovation, and competition.

  • Sales growth becomes negative, profits decline

  • Distribution channel slows down

  • Product loses customer appeal

  • Competition remains ahead

  • Product will get retire

  • Minimal marketing

Product Extension

When a product reaches decline stage, companies may decide to withdraw completely from the market. Or restart the product life cycle to continue the success. This is called Product Extension in the product life cycle model. Extension strategies are marketing techniques designed to extend a products life cycle and delay its decline.

  • Changing product design

  • Product diversification

  • Entry into new markets

  • Finding new uses

Conclusion

The product life cycle stages explain the changes in sales and profitability of products over their lifespan. To improve profitability and market positions, product managers need to use appropriate strategies for each life cycle stage.

Hina Kamra, Amazon Sr PM