Aviation Leadership and Management Skills Development - Marketing Product Life Cycle
Sofema Online (SOL) www.sofemaonline.com considers the role of Marketing Based on Product Life Cycle
Introduction – What is the Product Life Cycle (PLC)?
Typically, all Products have a beginning, middle, and ending and the Product Life Cycle describes the stages of a product from launch to being discontinued.
Product marketing managers must introduce their new product while it's relatively unknown and production is small.
It is well known that there is a high failure rate of new products and an effective marketing process is essential to support successful delivery. Therefore it is important to review your portfolio to understand which stage your products or services have reached across your portfolio of all products and to assess the market share.
Reviewing the product of portfolio enables marketing to plan for new products, reinvent existing products or discontinue products that are in serious decline.
Extending Product Life
» Explore possibilities of launching your product in new markets or on new platforms.
» As technology evolves, so do the platforms you have available for your products.
» Encourage flexible distribution models
» Choose to either lower your price for the same product, in an attempt to prolong its appeal by increasing its sense of value, or
» Add new features to the product to re-energize its place in your industry
Product End of Decline & Considerations
It is not unusual to find that as a product approaches the end life of its life it faces fewer competitors.
» End of Life Product Costs Can Rise
» End of Life Product Distribution becomes selective as some distributors have dropped the product.
» End of Life Promotion focuses on raising awareness of the existence of the product.
» If product sales are declining, you need to know why.
o Products move into decline due to
» Improved offers from competitors,
» Changes in behavior
» Because there is no longer a need for the product.
PLC Stages
PLC is a strategy tool that supports companies to plan for new product development as well as to refine existing products. –
» Introduction
» Growth
» Maturity
» Decline
New Product Development Considerations
» The new product development stage occurs before the product's life-cycle begins, consisting of market research leading up to product launch.
» Elements that support this stage include:
o Reviewing demand for products
o Assessing brand perception
o Competitor benchmarking
o Understanding consumers' preferences and behaviors
Lifecycle Marketing Model Considerations
It is important to ensure that the rate of your growth does not negatively impact the organization when taking a medium to long growth view
» Scale production too quickly and you can suffer from not being prepared.
» Scale either too slowly or unevenly and your costs can become unbalanced
Activities that are intended to raise either the sales numbers or the potential profit of existing products can sometimes fail to address effectively the interrelationship to other products or the timing of the marketing initiative.
Advance planning, performed before the specific need for the activity arises, can reap major rewards if performed diligently
» Endeavor to align with the optimum point of consumer readiness for such activities
» Consider also the point of optimum competitive effectiveness.
Continuously Review Customer Feedback
Review customer feedback on a continuous basis
» Carry out regular surveys and actively seek feedback
» Ensure your products don’t reach the end of their shelf life
» Use Feedback to understand what works, what doesn’t, and why.
Final Comments
A successful new product strategy should be considered in a forward-looking timeline.
» An effective new product strategy should endeavor to the likelihood, character, and timing of competitive and market events.
» While prediction is always hazardous and seldom very accurate, it is undoubtedly far better than not trying to predict at all.
» Every product strategy and every business decision typically should involve
o Making a prediction about the future, about the market, and about competitors.
o Acts in an offensive rather than a defensive or reactive fashion.
Next Steps
Please email team@sassofia.com with any comments, questions, or suggestions
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