Product life cycle management (or PLCM) is the succession of strategies used 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.

Contents
• 1 Product life cycle (PLC)
o 1.1 Request for deviation
o 1.2 Market identification
• 2 Lessons of the product life cycle (PLC)
• 3 Limitations
• 4 See also
• 5 References

• 6 External links

Product life cycle (PLC)

Like human beings, products also have a life-cycle. From birth to death, human beings
pass through various stages e.g. birth, growth, maturity, decline and death. A similar life-
cycle is seen in the case of products. The product life cycle goes through multiple phases,
involves many professional disciplines, and requires many skills, tools and processes.
Product life cycle (PLC) has to do with the life of a product in the market with respect to
business/commercial costs and sales measures. To say that a product has a life cycle is to
assert three things:

• Products have a limited life,

• Product sales pass through distinct stages, each posing different challenges,
opportunities, and problems to the seller,
• Products require different marketing, financing, manufacturing, purchasing, and
human resource strategies in each life cycle stage.

The four main stages of a product's life cycle and the accompanying characteristics are:

Stage Characteristics
1. costs are very high
2. slow sales volumes to start
3. little or no competition
1. Market
4. demand has to be created
introduction stage
5. customers have to be prompted to try the product

6. makes no money at this stage

2. Growth stage 1. costs reduced due to economies of scale
2. sales volume increases significantly
 3. profitability begins to rise
4. public awareness increases
5. competition begins to increase with a few new players in
establishing market

6. increased competition leads to price decreases

1. costs are lowered as a result of production volumes
increasing and experience curve effects
2. sales volume peaks and market saturation is reached
3. increase in competitors entering the market
4. prices tend to drop due to the proliferation of competing
3. Maturity stage
products
5. brand differentiation and feature diversification is
emphasized to maintain or increase market share

6. Industrial profits go down

1. costs become counter-optimal
2. sales volume decline or stabilize
4. Saturation and 3. prices, profitability diminish
decline stage
4. profit becomes more a challenge of production/distribution
efficiency than increased sales

Request for deviation

In the process of building a product following defined procedure, an RFD is a request for
authorization, granted prior to the manufacture of an item, to depart from a particular
performance

Market identification

Termination is not always the end of the cycle; it can be the end of a micro-entrant within
the grander scope of a macro-environment. The auto industry, fast-food industry, petro-
chemical industry, are just a few that demonstrate a macro-environment that overall has
not terminated even while micro-entrants over time have come and gone.

Lessons of the product life cycle (PLC)

It is claimed that every product has a life period, it is launched, it grows, and at some
point, may die. A fair comment is that - at least in the short term - not all products or
services die. Jeans may die, but clothes probably will not. Legal services or medical
services may die, but depending on the social and political climate, probably will not. ]

Limitations
The PLC model offers some degree of usefulness to marketing managers, in that it is
based on factual assumptions. Nevertheless, it is difficult for marketing management to
gauge accurately where a product is on its PLC graph. A rise in sales per se is not
necessarily evidence of growth. A fall in sales per se does not typify decline.
Furthermore, some products do not (or to date, at the least, have not) experienced a
decline. Coca Cola and Pepsi are examples of two products that have existed for many
decades, but are still popular products all over the world. Both modes of cola have been
in maturity for some years.

Another factor is that differing products would possess different PLC "shapes". A fad
product would hold a steep sloped growth stage, a short maturity stage, and a steep
sloped decline stage. A product such as Coca Cola and Pepsi would experience growth,
but also a constant level of sales over a number of decades. It can probably be said that a
given product (or products collectively within an industry) may hold a unique PLC shape,
and the typical PLC model can only be used as a rough guide for marketing management.
This is why its called the product life cycle. The duration of PLC stages is unpredictable.
It is not possible to predict when maturity or decline will begin. Strict adherence to PLC
can lead a company to misleading objectives and strategy prescriptions.