ABSTRACT
People are born, develop, mature, then decline in old age until death. The product life cycle builds on this human cycle, assuming that a successful product is created, launched, builds up a sales base, faces increasing competition or changing customer needs and declines, until the company withdraws it from the marketplace and kills it off. The marketer’s PLC concept has four stages, therefore: introduction, growth, maturity and decline. Not all products pass through all of these stages, as on-going analyses (cf. Brief 17) may identify problems that persuade decision-makers to withdraw a product before it reaches the growth or maturity stages.
