Phases of Product Development: A Qualitative Complement to the Product Life Cycle

Applying proper market strategies according to the each phases of product life cycle

The product life cycle (PLC) is a well-known economic pattern. It comprises the product’s first launch into the market until its final withdrawal from the market. During this period, it will split up into several distinct phases and requiring different management strategies in order to maintain the dynamic forces of the product (Komninos, 2002). The traditional hypothesis assumes the product sale should follow the bell-curve trend through the time of product life cycle. This hypothesis means we can label which life cycle the product is currently in by observing how many units the product sold. However, the real potential of product life cycle is not for prediction. It is particularly useful as a guiding principle for new product planning and managerial strategies (Wasson, 2009). In the light of the different phases in the product life cycle, product managers need to judge which phase the product is in and what market strategies should be applied to the market management and product development. Therefore, learning the product life cycle is essential for a company and its product managers. This research will focus on the different product characteristics in each phase and present what market strategies that the company and product managers will normally choose for promoting their product, in order to illustrate the useful purpose of the product life cycle concept.

The concept of the product life cycle began to frequently occur in journals during the year of 1970s to 1980s, it can also be resembled to a biologic form of organic life cycle which implicating the life stages of inception to death. In the product life cycle theory, it suggests any product will experience four phases including introduction, growth, maturity and decline.

However, the lengths of each phases varying. Different products maybe present different length of life cycle in each phase. Generally, how long a phase takes depends on the product’s complexity which including the product class such as the difference between a car product and a paper product, and product function such as the car product is for home or business use. Also the strategy and method operated by product manager will change the length of each product life cycle. Specific products such as Coca Cola can have a very long length and wide prevalence during its life cycle, and product likes toy might be have a short length of life cycle except some legendary toy such as Barbie series.

First is the introduction phase. In this period, because the product is newly launched on the market, the sales of the product begin from zero and rise slowly. After this phase, when the sales reach the certain level and the product is successfully accepted by the buyers, the product will enter the growth phase. This growth phase will lead the product profits to