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Product life-cycle management (PLM) is the succession of strategies by business management as a product goes through its life-cycle. The conditions in which a product is sold (advertising, saturation) changes over time and must be managed as it moves through its succession of stages.
The goals of product life cycle management (PLM) are to reduce time to market, improve product quality, reduce prototyping costs, identify potential sales opportunities and revenue contributions, maintain and sustain operational serviceability, and reduce environmental impacts at end-of-life. To create successful new products the company must understand its customers, markets and competitors. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) integrates people, data, processes and business systems. It provides product information for companies and their extended supply chain enterprise. PLM solutions help organizations overcome the increased complexity and engineering challenges of developing new products for the global competitive markets. [1] [ citation needed ]
The concept of product life cycle (PLC) concerns the life of a product in the market with respect to business/commercial costs and sales measures. The product life cycle proceeds through multiple phases, involves many professional disciplines, and requires many skills, tools and processes. PLC management makes the following three assumptions:[ citation needed ]
Once the product is designed and put into the market, the offering should be managed efficiently for the buyers to get value from it. Before entering into any market complete analysis is carried out by the industry for both external and internal factors including the laws and regulations, environment, economics, cultural values and market needs. From the business perspective, as a good business, the product needs to be sold before it finishes its life. In terms of profitability, expiry may jolt the overall profitability of the business therefore there are few strategies, which are practiced to ensure that the product is sold within the defined period of maturity.
Extending the product life cycle by improving sales, can be done through
Something important to notice is that all these techniques rely on advertising to become known. Advertising needs the others to target other potential customers and not the same over and over again. [2]
There are the following major product life cycle stages:
| Stage | Characteristics |
|---|---|
| 1. Market introduction stage | This is the stage in which the product has been introduced first time in the market and the sales of the product starts to grow slowly and gradually and the profit received from the product is nominal and non-attained. The market for the product is not competitive initially and also the company spends initially on the advertisement and uses various other tools for promotion in order to motivate and produce awareness among the consumers, therefore generating discerning demands for particular brand. The products start to gain distribution as the product is initially new in the market and in this stage the quality of the product is not assured and the price of the product will also be determined as low or high. [3]
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| 2. Growth stage | In the growth stage, the product is visibly present in the market, the product has habitual consumers, and there is quick growth in product sales. More new customers are becoming aware of the product and trying it. The customers are becoming satisfied with the product and are buying it again and again. The ratio of the product repetition for the trial procurement has risen. Competitors have started to overflow the market with more appealing and attractive inventions. This helps in creating increased competition in the market and also results in decreasing the product price.
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| 3. Maturity stage | In maturity stage, the cost of the product has been decreased because of the increased volume of the product and the product started to experience the curve effects. Also, more and more competitors have seen to be leaving the market. In this way very few buyers have been left for the product and this results in less sales of the product. The decline of the product and cost of attaining new buyers in this level is more as compare to the resulted profit. The brand or the product differentiation via rebating and discounts in price supports in recalling the outlet distribution. Also, there is a decline in the entire cost of marketing through enhancing the distribution and promotional efficiency with switching brand and segmentation.
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| 4. Saturation and decline stage | In this stage, the profit as well as the sales of the product has started to decline because of the deletion of the product from the market. The market for the product in this stage started to show negative rate of growth and corroding cash flows. The product at this stage may be kept but there should be fewer adverts. [4]
Note: Product termination is usually not the end of the business cycle, only the end of a single entrant within the larger scope of an ongoing business program. |
Identifying the stage of a product is an art more than a science, but it's possible to find patterns in some of the general product features at each stage. Identifying product stages when the product is in transition is very difficult.[ citation needed ] More recently, it has been shown that user-generated contents (UGC) (e.g., in the form of online product reviews) has the potential to reveal buyer personality characteristics that can in turn be used to identify product life cycle stage. [5]
| Identifying features | Stages | |||
| Introduction | Growth | Maturity | Decline | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales | Low | High | High | Low |
| Investment cost | Very high | High (lower than intro stage) | Low | Low |
| Competition | Low or no competition | High | Very high | Very High |
| Profit | Low | High | High | Low |
Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emphasize in advertising; operation of advertising campaigns; attendance at trade shows and public events; design of products and packaging attractive to buyers; defining the terms of sale, such as price, discounts, warranty, and return policy; product placement in media or with people believed to influence the buying habits of others; agreements with retailers, wholesale distributors, or resellers; and attempts to create awareness of, loyalty to, and positive feelings about a brand. Marketing is typically done by the seller, typically a retailer or manufacturer. Sometimes tasks are contracted to a dedicated marketing firm or advertising agency. More rarely, a trade association or government agency advertises on behalf of an entire industry or locality, often a specific type of food, food from a specific area, or a city or region as a tourism destination.
Product management is the business process of planning, developing, launching, and managing a product or service. It includes the entire lifecycle of a product, from ideation to development to go to market. Product managers are responsible for ensuring that a product meets the needs of its target market and contributes to the business strategy, while managing a product or products at all stages of the product lifecycle. Software product management adapts the fundamentals of product management for digital products.
A marketing plan may be part of an overall business plan. Solid marketing strategy is the foundation of a well-written marketing plan so that goals may be achieved. While a marketing plan contains a list of actions, without a sound strategic foundation, it is of little use to a business.
In marketing, market segmentation is the process of dividing a broad consumer or business market, normally consisting of existing and potential customers, into sub-groups of consumers based on shared characteristics.
the term "marketing mix" refers to a set of controllable elements or variables that a company uses to influence and meet the needs of its target customers in the most effective and efficient way possible. These variables are often grouped into four key components, often referred to as the "Four Ps of Marketing." Here's a clear definition of each component:
Marketing strategy is an organization's promotional efforts to allocate its resources across a wide range of platforms, channels to increase its sales and achieve sustainable competitive advantage within its corresponding market.
In industry, product lifecycle management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its inception through the engineering, design and manufacture, as well as the service and disposal of manufactured products. PLM integrates people, data, processes, and business systems and provides a product information backbone for companies and their extended enterprises.
In marketing, the unique selling proposition (USP), also called the unique selling point, or the unique value proposition (UVP) in the business model canvas, is the marketing strategy of informing customers about how one's own brand or product is superior to its competitors.
Relationship marketing is a form of marketing developed from direct response marketing campaigns that emphasizes customer retention and satisfaction rather than sales transactions. It differentiates from other forms of marketing in that it recognises the long-term value of customer relationships and extends communication beyond intrusive advertising and sales promotional messages. With the growth of the Internet and mobile platforms, relationship marketing has continued to evolve as technology opens more collaborative and social communication channels such as tools for managing relationships with customers that go beyond demographics and customer service data collection. Relationship marketing extends to include inbound marketing, a combination of search optimization and strategic content, public relations, social media and application development.
Software product management is the discipline of building, implementing and managing software or digital products, taking into account life cycle considerations and an audience. It is the discipline and business process which governs a product from its inception to the market or customer delivery and service in order to maximize revenue. This is in contrast to software that is delivered in an ad hoc manner, typically to a limited clientele, e.g. service.
A target audience is the intended audience or readership of a publication, advertisement, or other message catered specifically to said intended audience. In marketing and advertising, it is a particular group of consumer within the predetermined target market, identified as the targets or recipients for a particular advertisement or message. Businesses that have a wide target market will focus on a specific target audience for certain messages to send, such as The Body Shops Mother's Day advertisements, which were aimed at the children and spouses of women, rather than the whole market which would have included the women themselves. A target audience is formed from the same factors as a target market, but it is more specific, and is susceptible to influence from other factors. An example of this was the marketing of the USDA's food guide, which was intended to appeal to young people between the ages of 2 and 18.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to marketing:
Digital Prototyping gives conceptual design, engineering, manufacturing, and sales and marketing departments the ability to virtually explore a complete product before it's built. Industrial designers, manufacturers, and engineers use Digital Prototyping to design, iterate, optimize, validate, and visualize their products digitally throughout the product development process. Innovative digital prototypes can be created via CAutoD through intelligent and near-optimal iterations, meeting multiple design objectives, identifying multiple figures of merit, and reducing development gearing and time-to-market. Marketers also use Digital Prototyping to create photorealistic renderings and animations of products prior to manufacturing. Companies often adopt Digital Prototyping with the goal of improving communication between product development stakeholders, getting products to market faster, and facilitating product innovation.
In marketing, a company’s value proposition is the full mix of benefits or economic value which it promises to deliver to the current and future customers who will buy their products and/or services. It is part of a company's overall marketing strategy which differentiates its brand and fully positions it in the market. A value proposition can apply to an entire organization, parts thereof, customer accounts, or products and services.
The study of the history of marketing, as a discipline, is meaningful because it helps to define the baselines upon which change can be recognised and understand how the discipline evolves in response to those changes. The practice of marketing has been known for millennia, but the term "marketing" used to describe commercial activities assisting the buying and selling of products or services came into popular use in the late nineteenth century. The study of the history of marketing as an academic field emerged in the early twentieth century.
Brand awareness is the extent to which customers are able to recall or recognize a brand under different conditions. Brand awareness is one of two dimensions from brand knowledge, an associative network memory model. Brand awareness is a key consideration in consumer behavior, advertising management, and brand management. The consumer's ability to recognize or recall a brand is central to purchasing decision-making. Purchasing cannot proceed unless a consumer is first aware of a product category and a brand within that category. Awareness does not necessarily mean that the consumer must be able to recall a specific brand name, but they must be able to recall enough distinguishing features for purchasing to proceed. Creating brand awareness is the main step in advertising a new product or bringing back the older brand in light.
A target market, also known as serviceable obtainable market (SOM), is a group of customers within a business's serviceable available market at which a business aims its marketing efforts and resources. A target market is a subset of the total market for a product or service.
Product Planning, or product discovery, is the ongoing process of identifying and articulating market requirements that define a product's feature set. It serves as the basis for decision-making about price, distribution and promotion. Product planning is also the means by which companies and businesses can respond to long-term challenges within the business environment, often achieved by managing the product throughout its life cycle using various marketing strategies, including product extensions or improvements, increased distribution, price changes and promotions. It involves understanding the needs and wants of core customer groups so products can target key customer desires and allows a firm to predict how a product will be received within a market upon launch.
Customer value maximization (CVM) is a real-time service model that, proponents say, goes beyond basic customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities, identifying and capturing maximum potential from prospects and existing customers.
Product strategy defines the high-level plan for developing and marketing a product, how the product supports the business strategy and goals, and is brought to life through product roadmaps. A product strategy describes a vision of the future with this product, the ideal customer profile and market to serve, go-to-market and positioning (marketing), thematic areas of investment, and measures of success. A product strategy sets the direction for new product development. Companies utilize the product strategy in strategic planning and marketing to set the direction of the company's activities. The product strategy is composed of a variety of sequential processes in order for the vision to be effectively achieved. The strategy must be clear in terms of the target customer and market of the product in order to plan the roadmap needed to achieve strategic goals and give customers better value.