From the course: Growth Marketing Foundations

Management of the product life cycle

From the course: Growth Marketing Foundations

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Management of the product life cycle

- In 1965, Theodore Levitt, who was an American economist and professor at Harvard Business School, popularized the concept of the product life cycle. His goal was to explain a theme that was common between all successful products. All of these products were observed taking the same path, moving through various stages. Now this concept has remained unchanged to this day, even with the dramatic shifts in how we market. All successful products go through the product life cycle, which is to say they pass through the following stages: development, introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Now we often depict this life cycle along a bell shaped curve to demonstrate the trajectory. And it's important to know this life cycle because your role and your goals in growth marketing change depending on which phase your product is in. Now, every product starts with development. And this happens internally. It's all of the effort to create the product and prepare it for release into the market. From there, once we've launched into the market, tremendous effort will go into generating awareness, building brand identity, and achieving market penetration. Once the product has launched and receives favorable consumer reactions, it enters the growth stage. And the goal is just to, well, as it sounds, grow. And here, we need to increase consumer adoption and build brand preference and market share. This is where growth marketing was born. Now, once aggressive growth is no longer possible, we say that a product has matured, and marketing is now focused on maintaining market share, defending itself from competition, building a reputation, and finding opportunities to increase revenue. Inevitably, however, all good things come to an end. And during the decline stage, a product loses desirability, and companies must decide to improve it with new features, discontinue it, or pivot. A successful move here means that the product can move back to an earlier stage. Understanding the life cycle stage you're in is important, but knowing what's ahead is just as important. Having a short term view, or tunnel vision, on a particular phase may lead you to make marketing decisions that hurt the next stage of the life cycle. Take 15 to 20 minutes and evaluate what stage you think your product is in. If you're not actively involved with a product, pick one that you've recently started using and try to work through the same exercise.

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