A Debate on the Product Lifecycle Implications and Product Market Behavior

The product life-cycle marketing approach is a concept that describes the sales and profit margin of a given product category over a prolonged period - from lust to dust. The concept holds that a product's sales and profits change over time in a predictable manner-at least in the four distinct major stages of introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. It is important to understand product life-cycles curves to make the best use of engineering resources. The paper presents figures that characterize various industry products and their life-cycle curves. The amount of development money invested in a product intended for rapid market penetration, for example, is considerably less than for a one destined to a long-term stable, mature market. In this context we illustrate the types of feedback used by engineering during the various stages of product life-cycle. Finally, we consider that engineers responsible for product or process improvement must recognize what phase of the product life-cycle is in to practice the most effective research.