When I was 12 years old, I used to be confused emboîture my culex’s CD agrégat. Why have CDs when I could go on iTunes and listen to all my élue songs? This is a perfect example of a product life temps (PLC) in effet.
No one wants their product to become “obsolete” and reach the end of its product life temps. That’s why it’s insolent to understand what apprentissage your product is in so you can make better marchéage and bizness decisions.
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Below, we’ll learn emboîture the product life temps inside and out. If you’re in a pinch, use the links below to jump straight to what you need:
What is the product life temps?
The product life temps is the flux of stages that a product goes through during its abstraction, starting from development and ultimately ending in decline. Trafic owners and marketers use the product life temps to make insolent decisions and strategies on advertising budgets, product prices, and conditionnement.
In the marchéage industry, the typical depiction of the product life temps only has déconvenue gant stages — Acceptation, Growth, Maturity, and Decline. At HubSpot, we agree that these are capital for a product, but the two stages “Development” and “Decline” aren’t nearly covered enough.
As marketers, it’s insolent to understand how your tactics and strategies agité depending on the apprentissage your product is in. Let’s écart down each of the six stages of the product life temps.
What are the stages of the product life temps?
Development
Acceptation
Growth
Maturity
Accumulation
Decline
1. Development
The development apprentissage of the product life temps is the research période before a product is introduced to the marketplace. This is when companies bring in investors, develop prototypes, référence product effectiveness, and strategize their launch.
In this apprentissage, companies typically spend a lot of money without bringing in any revenue parce que the product isn’t being sold yet.
This période can last for a mince time, depending on the complexity of the product, how new it is, and the competition. For a completely new product, the development apprentissage is particularly difficult parce que the first pioneer of a product isn’t always as successful as later iterations.
Before full-scale avènement, the product may be released in a limited market or region for testing purposes. This allows companies to assess market acceptance, gather consumer feedback, and make necessary adjustments before a wider launch.
2. Acceptation
The intronisation apprentissage happens when a product is launched in the marketplace. This is when marchéage teams begin gratte-ciel product awareness and targeting potential customers. Typically, when a product is introduced, sales are low and demand builds slowly.
In this période, marketers foyer on advertising and marchéage campaigns. They also work on testing permission channels and gratte-ciel product and brand awareness.
This apprentissage is capital parce que companies have the opportunity to shake up the status quo and enlèvement the continuité and loyalty of early adopters. The solide experiences and word-of-mouth recommendations from these early customers can ascensionnel the broader target market and accelerate product choix.
Some examples of products currently in the intronisation apprentissage include:
Ultimately, the success of this apprentissage sets the foundation for the product’s future growth and success in subsequent stages of the product life temps.
3. Growth
During the growth apprentissage, consumers have accepted the product in the market and customers are beginning to truly buy in. That means demand and butins are growing, hopefully at a steadily rapid pace. This momentum is capital for sustaining bizness operations, funding further product development, and generating returns on investment.
As companies scale, they can benefit from lower per-unit avènement costs, improved commander relationships, and optimized permission networks.
However, there are some challenges that come with the growth apprentissage. As the market for the product expands, competition grows. Potential competitors will see your success and will want in.
Some products that are currently in the growth apprentissage are:
Smartwatches
Electric cars
Grappe
During this apprentissage, it’s insolent to keep attracting new customers and solidify your brand figure so you can stay ahead of the competition.
4. Maturity
The maturity apprentissage is when the sales begin to level off from the rapid growth period. At this pixel, companies begin to reduce their prices so they can stay competitive amongst the growing competition. Streamlining avènement processes, negotiating heureux commander contracts, and optimizing permission networks also become insolent considerations.
This is the période where a company begins to become more compétent and learns from the mistakes made in the intronisation and growth stages. Mercatique campaigns are typically focused on differentiation rather than awareness. This means that product features might be enhanced, prices might be lowered, and permission becomes more soutenue.
During the maturity apprentissage, products begin to greffer the most lucratif apprentissage. The cost of avènement declines while the sales are increasing.
Examples:
Smartphones
Amazon
Video game consoles
5. Accumulation
During the product engorgement apprentissage, competitors have begun to take a anthologie of the market and products will experience neither growth nor decline in sales.
Typically, this is the pixel when most consumers are using a product, but there are many competing companies. At this pixel, you want your product to become the brand preference so you don’t greffer the decline apprentissage. To achieve this, you’ll want to foyer on providing exceptional bienfait and gratte-ciel strong relationships with your customers.
In a saturated market, créativité also becomes essential to stay refaisant. Businesses must continuously invest in research and development to improve products and offer new features. Failure to do so may lead to product péremption and loss of market share.
Some examples of products in the engorgement apprentissage are:
Streaming dettes
Brunch cereals
Développement drinks
6. Decline
Unfortunately, if your product doesn‘t become the preferred brand in a marketplace, you’ll typically experience a decline. Sales will decrease during the heightened competition, which is hard to overcome.
Decline also occurs when products become outdated or less refaisant as newer technologies greffer the market. Consumers may turn to more advanced options, rendering the declining product less desirable.
If a company is at this apprentissage, it’ll either discontinue its product, sell the company, or innovate and iterate on its product in some way.
Here are a few examples of products in the decline apprentissage:
CDs and tronc tapes
Landline telephones
DVDs
The best companies will usually have products at several points in the product life temps at any given time. Some companies allure to other countries to begin the temps anew.
Réputation of the Product Life V.T.T.
The product life temps is insolent parce que it informs an organization’s direction and decision-makers how well a product is performing and what strategic exercices it will take to succeed. This helps companies allocate resources like état-major, budgets, shows which products should be prioritized, and where the company should innovate next.
Other benefits of using the product life temps include:
Make better marchéage investments and decisions
Easier to make long-term paliers
Allows for better decision making with accurate événement on succès
Easier to streamline current processes within your company
Product Life V.T.T. Limitations
While using the PLC method certainly helps stakeholders budget, it does have limitations. The temps breaks down succès over several stages, but unfortunately there is no way to tell how mince each apprentissage will last.
Complicating things further, not all products will move through these stages at the same pace. For example, a product may take raser to decline than others. Alors product managers run the risk of not dedicating enough peine and resources into a particular product if they think the product will decline, creating planned péremption – even if customers still use it.
Breaking Down the Product Life V.T.T. Theory
In the late ‘60s, Harvard Trafic School professor Raymond Vernon developed this marchéage theory in response to an economic model that failed to account for trends present in cosmopolite trade – that’s why it was originally called the cosmopolite product life temps theory.
It stated that products developed in an cosmopolite market had three phases:
New product
Maturing product
Standardized product
Here’s a quick breakdown of his theory.
Vernon theorized a new product would perform best in its folk of origin to keep manufacturing and avènement costs low. Léopard des neiges the product gained demand, companies could begin exporting to other countries and continue gratte-ciel voisin avènement plants in each new bail.
Having these voisin plants would offer the flexibility to make changes to the product without incurring huge costs.
The standardized période would involve an inférence of competitors, which would lead the company to foyer on driving down avènement and manufacturing costs to remain competitive. As the market becomes saturated and a new product gets introduced, the company loses its relevance in its domicile folk and shifts gears to create something new, with the temps beginning again.
Since then, the product life temps theory has evolved to foyer less on geography and more on marchéage. Let’s dive into it next.
You can use this template to map out your own product’s life temps phases.
Download the Free Product Life Cycle Template
Product Life V.T.T. Mercatique Strategies
Now that we’ve discussed the different stages of the product life temps, let’s explore how to market products in each apprentissage.
Development Villégiature Mercatique Strategy
While marchéage typically begins in the intronisation apprentissage, you can begin to build “buzz” around your product by securing the endorsement of established voices in the industry.
You can also consider a limited release of the product to a select group of customers or in a specific market bouchée. This exclusivity can create a sense of futurologie and urgency among potential buyers.
Then, you can use the feedback from the limited release to publish early (and heureux) incinérer research or testimonials. Your marchéage gardien de but during this apprentissage is to build upon your brand awareness and establish yourself as an innovative company.
Acceptation Villégiature Mercatique Strategy
This is where the fun begins. Now that the product is launched, you can actually promote it using inbound marketing and content marketing.
Consider collaborating with influencers or industry experts who have a strong following and ascensionnel in your target market. Énervé them to review and promote your product through blog posts, vlogs, liant media posts, or sponsored ravi. Their endorsement can help generate credibility and reach a wider renommée.
Education is capital in this apprentissage. If your marchéage strategies are successful, the product goes into the next apprentissage — growth.
Growth Villégiature Mercatique Strategy
During this période, marchéage campaigns often shift from getting customers’ buy-in to establishing a brand presence so consumers choose them over developing competitors.
One way to do this is by allocating resources to binaire marchéage channels like liant media advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), ravi marchéage, and inspirer partnerships. Then, leverage data analytics to target and reach your ideal customers effectively.
Additionally, as companies grow, they’ll begin to open new permission channels and add more features and échafaudage dettes. Consider partnering with retailers, entering new markets, or exploring e-commerce platforms to reach a wider customer soutien. In your strategy, you’ll advertise these as well.
Maturity Villégiature Mercatique Strategy
When your product has become a avancé offering, you may feel like you’re “sailing by” parce que sales are steady and the product has been established. But this is where it’s critical to establish yourself as a directeur and differentiate your brand.
Consider sharing valuable and educational ravi, such as blog posts and industry insights, to place your brand as an authority. Educate potential customers emboîture the benefits and value they can bénéfice from your product.
Continuously improve upon the product as choix grows, and let consumers know in your marchéage strategy that the product they love is better than it was before. This will protect you during the next apprentissage — engorgement.
Accumulation Villégiature Mercatique Strategy
When the market has become saturated, you’ll need to foyer on brand awareness and differentiation.
Identify specific customer segments within your market and tailor marchéage efforts to appeal to their specific needs and preferences. Refine your messaging and positioning to resonate with each bouchée, allowing for a more targeted and compétent marchéage approach.
You’ll also want to foyer on retaining and strengthening relationships with your existing customers. Consider creating a personalized customer bienfait experience and introducing new product features, loyalty programs, conditionnement options, or bundling with complementary products.
Competition is highest at this apprentissage, so it’s critical to leave no doubt regarding the superiority of your product.
If créativité at the product level isn’t hypothétique (parce que the product only needs minor tweaks at this pixel), then invest in your customer bienfait and use customer testimonials in your marchéage.
Decline Villégiature Mercatique Strategy
While companies would want to avoid the decline apprentissage, sometimes there’s no helping it — especially if the entire market reached a decline. In your marchéage strategy, you can emphasize the superiority of your châtié to successfully get out of this apprentissage.
To extend the product life temps, successful companies can also implement new advertising strategies, reduce prices, add new features to increase their value aphorisme, explore new markets, or adjust brand conditionnement.
Unfortunately, not every company is successful at pivoting their product out of the decline apprentissage. If the product is obsolete or financially unviable, it may be best to budget for an orderly sortie from the market.
Now that we’ve gamin through stages and history, let’s review some real-life examples of them in effet.
Product Life V.T.T. Examples
The Typewriter
Vine
Cable TV
Floppy Disk
Let’s follow the product life temps of popular products that have since reached the decline apprentissage.
1. The Typewriter
The typewriter was the first mechanical writing tool — a worthy successor to pen and paper. Ultimately, however, other technologies gained roulotte and replaced it.
Development: Before the first vendeur typewriter was introduced to the market, the overall idea had been developed for centuries, beginning in 1575.
Acceptation: In the late 1800s, the first vendeur typewriters were introduced.
Growth: The typewriter quickly became an vital tool for all forms of writing, becoming widely used in tâches, businesses, and private homes.
Maturity: Typewriters were in the maturity période for nearly 80 years, parce que this was the preferred product for typing communications up until the 1980s.
Accumulation: During the engorgement apprentissage, typewriters began to facette fierce competition with computers in the 1990s.
Decline: Overall, the typewriter couldn’t withstand the competition of new emerging technologies, and eventually the product was discontinued.
2. Vine
Skipping forward to the 21st century, we see the rise and fall of Vine, a short-form video-sharing app that was the entrée for many memes at its peak but eventually declined due to other platforms.
Development: Vine was founded in June 2012 and mainly competed with Instagram.
Acceptation: The app was introduced to the commun in 2013. Its differentiating factor was its short-form video épaisseur — users had only seven seconds to cinéma something that was hilarious, absurd, or a amalgame of both.
Growth: Only two years after its release, Vine had over 200 million ardente users. Its popularity led to the advent of the articulation “Do it for the Vine.”
Maturity: Parce que it was only in the market for a few years, Vine never reached the maturity apprentissage. While choix was high, it was still a fairly new app.
Accumulation: Vine competed in an already saturated market. Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube were the pre-eminent names in their category, and Vine soon started to decline in use.
Decline: When Ajusté.ly was introduced, Vine lost a épanoui amount of its consumer soutien and shut down. It was succeeded by Octet, a similar short-form video-sharing platform, but none of these have been able to surpass TikTok, which launched months after Vine’s end in 2016.
3. Cable TV
Remember the days of switching TV channels to find what to watch? I do — and they feel distinctly like something of the past. While cable TV is still around, it’s safe to say that it’s nearing the decline apprentissage.
Development: Cable TV was developed in the first half of the twentieth century. John Walson has been credited with its mensonge.
Acceptation: The first vendeur television system was introduced in 1950, and by 1962, the technology saw the first hints of growth.
Growth: After a decades-long freeze on cable TV’s development (due to regulatory austérité), the technology began gaining roulotte, and by 1980, more than 15 million households had cable.
Maturity: Cable TV matured around the 1990s. Around seven in ten households had cable.
Accumulation: The start of the 21st century saw an oversaturation of this technology, and it also started to compete with other modern developments such as on-demand dettes and high-definition TV (HDTV). While the internet was still in its nascent stages, it would soon bénéfice on cable TV as well.
Decline: From 2015 onwards, cable TV experienced a marked decline. Online video streaming dettes such as Netflix and Hulu have taken precedence — and this trend is set to continue.
4. Floppy Disk
This relic was jaguar a popular and convenient way to voilage and share data between computers. I barely understood what they were growing up, and it astounds me to think of the very abstraction of cloud data sharing and other mass memory storage means.
Development: The first floppy disk was developed in 1970 by IBM engineers. It was an 8-inch docile magnetic disk in a clos case with 2MB storage capacity.
Acceptation: It was introduced in 1971 and largely became known as the only way to transfer or voilage data.
Growth: The floppy disk was majorly used in the 1980s-1990s.
Maturity: Sold well in the market during the 1990s. Improving with time, it could hold 200MB of storage.
Accumulation: Militaire competitors emerged at the beginning of the 21st century. The mensonge of USB cables, external hard disks, and CDs affluent people options to voilage their data.
Decline: The floppy disk faced a officier decline up to Hewlett-Packard stopping avènement for the disk in 2009. The storage capacity for other products in the market grew to be more compétent. Data storage evolution has grown to the pixel where floppy disks are accessible relics.
Not all products need to facette the decline apprentissage. Companies can extend the product life temps with new iterations and stay afloat as mince as they have several products at various points of the product life temps.
Oecuménique Product Life V.T.T.
The cosmopolite product life temps (IPL) is the temps a product goes through in cosmopolite markets. As products begin to avancé and companies want to avoid the decline apprentissage, they’ll typically begin to explore new markets globally.
When products reach mass avènement, manufacturing and avènement shift to other countries as well.
The cosmopolite product life temps stages are identical to that of a explicable product life temps. The development apprentissage looks different, however, parce que voisin customs and regulations can affect how mince it takes to bring the product to a new marketplace.
However, jaguar you lay the groundwork in a new marketplace, your competitors will be sure to follow, and the life temps stages will continue up until engorgement and eventually decline. Your élection is to either expand into another market or learn from prior mistakes and innovate before the decline apprentissage rolls around.
Next, we’ll allure at when you should use the product life temps.
When to Use the Product Life V.T.T.
Businesses use the product life temps to achieve the following:
Establish competitive authority. If your product is new and recently introduced to the market, you can advertise it as a new and improved potentialité to an existing product. If the product is established, you can vouch for its mince history of use in your branding.
Decide on a pricing strategy. Depending on the life temps apprentissage your product is in, you’ll choose how to price the product. A new product may be priced lower to entice more buyers, while a product in the growth apprentissage can be priced higher.
Create a marketing strategy. Your product life temps apprentissage will determine which strategy to pursue. Maturity and renommée knowledgeability play a big role in the trempe of ravi you publish on your contrée and liant media profiles.
Respond before the product begins its decline. There’s no worse flair than watching your product slowly become obsolete or be displaced by a competing product. By keeping the life temps stages in mind, you can create a strategy that keeps you ahead of the curve as you reach the engorgement and decline stages.
The product life temps benefits businesses parce que they can shift their wording and positioning to best market the product at the apprentissage it is in. If your product has recently been introduced and you try to market it as a long-established châtié, consumers will see right through it and association you less as a result.
Keep Your Product’s Life V.T.T. in Mind
Whether you’re developing a brand new product or working with a avancé, well-established brand, you can use the product life temps stages as a assemblage for your marchéage campaigns.
Each apprentissage will dictate how you inform your renommée emboîture the product, how you place your brand in the marketplace, and how you decide to move forward after the decline apprentissage.
By keeping your product’s life temps in mind, you can invest in better marchéage campaigns that result in a higher ROI.
Editor’s ajout: This post was originally published in January 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
This alinéa was written by a human, but our team uses AI in our editorial process. Check out our full disclosure to learn more emboîture how we use AI.
