Product life cycle

The duration from the moment a product is first made available to consumers until it is taken off the shelves is referred to as its "life cycle." Management and marketing experts utilize this idea to determine when it's suitable to boost advertising, lower pricing, enter new markets or alter packaging. Product life cycle management is the process of planning how to constantly support and sustain a product.

Benefits of Product Life Cycle

• Resource Allocation and Business Development: The product life cycle facilitates a better understanding of each product or brand's place within a company's portfolio for marketers and business development. This makes it possible for the business to internally reallocate resources to particular products in accordance with where those goods stand in the product life cycle. For instance, a business may choose to reallocate the time of its marketing personnel to items that are either in the launch or growth stages. Alternatively, if the product develops, it could need to spend more on hiring engineers or customer support representatives.
• Economic Growth: Since the product life cycle encourages innovation and dissuades the support of outmoded items, it naturally tends to have a beneficial effect on economic growth. Utilizing the product life cycle, businesses can identify opportunities to improve their goods' effectiveness, safety, efficiency, speed, cost, or fit with customers' needs as they progress through the stages of the product life cycle.

Limitations of Utilizing the Product Life Cycle

• Not Universally Applicable: The product life cycle is useful for planning and analysis, but it isn't applicable to every business or to every type of product. Consider well-known beverage brands whose main offerings have reached maturity for decades; concurrently, spin-offs or alterations of these drinks from the same corporation have not succeeded.

• Legal and Trademark Constraints: In businesses where there are legal or trademark constraints, the product life cycle may also be artificial. Think about the new 20-year patent term, which was in effect when the US application for the invention was submitted. Regardless of the stage a drug is in, when its patent expires, competition may negatively affect it, even if it is just starting to expand.
• Planned Obsolescence: Prospective planned obsolescence is a regrettable byproduct of the product life cycle. When a product reaches the mature stage, a business could feel pressured to start thinking about replacing it. This might be the case even if the current product continues to benefit consumers greatly and has a long shelf life. This could result in wasted product and ineffective use of resources for product development for manufacturers who release new items every few years.