Marketing

Question 01

(a) Define your understanding of the term product life cycle.

The Product cycle Life enlarges 5 stages and these stages clearly show beginning to end of the new product.

After developed a product it is launched into the target market, then consumers will start consume it and it makes more and more customers as it grows, finally the product established in target market and the product becomes mature, then after certain period of time the other compete products overtaken the product, and it goes into decline and is eventually withdrawn.

Some product's life cycle might be end completely with in a few months or years. Introduction age is the longer period in product life cycle.

The PLC is divided into five major stages-

 Product Development

 Market Introduction

 Market Growth

 Market Maturity

 Sales Decline

Below graph shows the behavior of product life circle

(b) Identify and describe the stages of the product life cycle and suggest how the concept may be used by the marketing manager. Illustrate your answer by use of real life examples.

Note-Bellow concepts are categories according to the marketing mix for show clear Usage and decisions of marketing manager.

1. Product Development

When company develops a new product idea this stage starts and during this stage lot of expenses occur also sales zero and revenues are negative.

It is the time of spending with absolute no return all spent money can earn after the introduction stage.

In this stage management should observe the market, customer needs and wants and then get idea about what they will produce.

Product- Design the product to the target market

Pricing- Price should be low because company should give chance to customers to use it.

Promotion- Do promotion campaigns

Place (Distribution) – select limited channels and locations for target customers.

2. Introduction

The Introduction stage is very important stage because, many products fail in this Introduction stage. In This stage the developed product is firstly launch to the target market. Awareness of customers is very important to the success of a new product. Customers aren't looking for the product there for promotion campaigns are help to prevent it.

We can use two types of strategies management to promote product to consumers. We can use either a penetration strategy or a skimming strategy to put this product through customers. When penetration strategy is used prices are set very high firstly and then gradually lowered in certain time and this strategy is uses when there are few competitors for product. With this strategy company can earn high Profits but with a great risk because if people neglect to pay high prices to buy relevant product it may lose out. The next strategy is a skimming strategy. In this strategy prices are very low at the beginning and then gradually increase. If competitors are control great percentage of the market for that this is a good strategy to use.

Product- Product should brand and good quality product should put to the market and intellectual property protection because competitors may copy the product. For example, patents, trademarks and copy right protection.

Pricing- To build strong market share rapidly Set low penetration price, or to recover development coast set high skim pricing

Promotion- Promotion is target at early adopters and innovators. Promotion use seeks to give good knowledge to potential consumers and build