Preventing Your Products Decline

Why Extend the Product Life Cycle?

 

The primary reason for extending the product life cycle is simply profit.  Extending out the life of a product gives the business every opportunity to exploit the markets opportunities.  It allows businesses to gain additional time to generate more profit by establishing a longer presence with the product.

 

When each stage of the product life cycle is extended it allows more exposure to every target market in that phase of the life cycle giving the product time to gain even more consumers.

 

Strategies to Extend the Product Life Cycle.

 

The tactics for extending the product life cycle will differ with each phase, market conditions, type of product and the consumers.  They are broken down here into product planning and marketing strategies.

 

Product Planning

·         Create different variations for the product – what may be the best example of this tactic is seen in software.  It is very common for new versions of software to come out annually with added benefits to use causing consumers to upgrade creating repeat consumers.  Another example of a product variation would be flavor changes in products.

·         Find new uses for the product – one of the best examples of this can be found in Arm & Hammer baking soda.  Originally used in, yes cooking it may be better known now for its deodorizing uses.

·         Layering product lines – there are so many examples of this tactic being used today one needs look no farther than the car you drive, the printer you use or the jello you eat.  In the automobile industry you see the different families of products in cars vs. SUVs, in printers it is ink vs. laser and in jello there are literally hundreds of variations.

 

Marketing Strategies

·         Reposition the product in the eyes of the consumer – I am going to use Arm & Hammer again here just because it is such a good example of repositioning a product in the eyes of a consumer.  Because they were so successful baking soda is used for deodorizing more than it ever could have been used for cooking.

·         Use pricing as a tool to reposition and influence sales – Good examples of using pricing to reposition and influence increases in sales can be easily seen in the video game console industry.  It is common for these consoles to be initially released at one price only to have it significantly reduced within six months to re-stimulate demand and sales.  Just look at the initial release of the X-Box in 2001 when after six months on the market prices were reduced by a whopping 30 percent.

·         Penetrate new markets or consumer groups – An example of this could be targeting women for in marketing pickup trucks.  A market typically driven by sales to men which could be expanded to a whole new demographic base.

·         Co-brand your product with another strong brand – You can see examples all over the food industry.  One that I will point out is Lays BBQ flavor potato chips made with KC Masterpiece barbeque sauce.

·         Attempt to increase the frequency of use with your product – Look at the increases in bottled water consumption over the past few years.  Where it used to be an extravagance to purchase a bottle of water that you could get from a drinking fountain, the industry has created a perception of quality which has increased consumption dramatically.

·         Re-package your product with new packaging designs – This is seen time after time in consumable goods such as toothpaste.  Now you can choose between pumps or tubes with different packaging for the same products.

·         Re-brand the product to build new values associated with it – This is the most drastic of all measures.  This step can be taken for a number of reasons.

o    When a change is needed to a products perception in the eyes of the consumers. 

o    Following a merger or acquisition.

o    To segment a market through product differentiation.

A well known example would be when Norton chose to rename newly acquired Cleansweep to Norton Cleansweep, then to Norton Systemworks and on to Norton 360.

 

What Stages of the Product Life Cycle do you Apply These Strategies?

 

Stage – Introduction to the Market

·         Increasing frequency of use

·         Pricing

 

Stage – Product Growth

·         Pricing

·         Changes to product features

·         Diversification of product

·         New uses for product

 

Stage – Maturity

·         Pricing

·         Diversification of product

·         Co-branding

·         New uses for product

·         Re-packaging

 

Stage – Stability or Decline

·         Pricing

·         Frequency of use increases

·         Re-branding of product

·         Find new market segments

·         Re-positioning of product