Product Life Cycle (PLC)
A
company’s positioning and differentiation strategy must change as the product,
market and the competitors change over the PLC. To say that a product has a
life cycle is to say :
·
Products
have a limited life.
·
Product
sales pass through different stages.
·
Profits
rise and fall at different stages of PLC.
·
Products
require different marketing, financial, manufacturing, etc strategies during
each stage of the PLC.
Most product life cycles are portrayed
as a bell shaped curve. They curve is normally divided in to four stages:
- Introduction – A period of low sales growth as the product is introduced in the market. Profits are extremely low because of the heavy expenses of product introduction.
- Growth – A period of rapid market acceptance and substantial profit improvement.
- Maturity – A slowdown in sales growth because the product has achieved acceptance by potential buyers. Profits stabilize or decline due to increase in competition.
- Decline – Sales show a downward drift and profits erode.
According to the recent sales pattern of Honda stunner, the stage on which the product has reached is late growth and very soon due to increase in competition in the form of new products from Hero and Bajaj, Apache will soon enter maturity. For the time being, Honda is nowhere close to the decline stage as new stunner variants are coming out into the market due to which Apache is sustaining itself well in spite of stiff competition.
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