THE VARIOUS PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE AND THEIR LAGGARDS

THE VARIOUS PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE AND THEIR LAGGARDS

According to Thom Holland’s work on (Sales & Marketing) which was published on April 6th, 2011, he argued that business leaders create and develop strategies that will put their organization in the best possible position for success. To do so they need to have a good understanding of how things work around them and how things are likely to work once they start to move forward.  Therefore, when developing a marketing mix strategy for a product, it is typically a good idea to create unique strategies for each phase of the product life cycle.  To do so, there is the need to have a solid understanding of common characteristics typically seen with each phase in the product life cycle.

A new product progresses through a sequence of stages from introduction to growth, maturity, and decline. This sequence is known as the product life cycle and is associated with changes in the marketing situation, thus impacting the marketing strategy and the marketing mix.
The product revenue and profits can be plotted as a function of the life-cycle stages as shown in the graph below:

     

Introduction

When a product is first introduced to a market, typically sales will be very low. This is usually due to the simple fact that not a lot of people are aware of the product. As a result, the fixed costs can not be spread out very well, which leads to a high cost per customer. The combination of low sales and a high cost per customer typically result in negative profits. During the introduction phase, it’s not very likely that there will be very much competition.

Growth

As the product enters the growth phase, sales should start to rise rather rapidly. As people become aware and start to buy the product, the overall cost per customer will ultimately decrease. With more customers and a lower cost per customer, the product’s profitability should start to increase. During the growth phase, competition will start to take notice and will likely enter the market with a similar product.

Maturity

Once a product finally enters the maturity phase, sales revenue should start to level out. Because the product is selling in such large volumes, the overall cost per customer should be very low. As a result, the product’s profitability should be at its highest point yet. During the maturity phase, it’s likely that the number of competitors in the market has become stable, possibly even declining some.

Decline

And lastly, the phase that people tend to dislike, the decline. During the decline phase, the product’s sales should start to decline, while the cost per customer continues to stay relatively low. Due to the declining sales revenues, the product’s profitability will eventually start to decline. During the decline phase, competitors will likely leave the market.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PLC STAGES

Market introduction stage
cost high
sales volume low
no/little competition - competitive manufacturers watch for acceptance/segment growth
losses
demand has to be created
customers have to be prompted to try the product

Growth stage
costs reduced due to economies of scale
sales volume increases significantly
profitability
public awareness
competition begins to increase with a few new players in establishing market
prices to maximize market share

Mature stage
costs are very low as you are well established in market & no need for publicity.
sales volume peaks
increase in competitive offerings
prices tend to drop due to the proliferation of competing products
brand differentiation, feature diversification, as each player seeks to differentiate from competition with "how much product" is offered
very profitable

Decline or Stability stage
costs become counter-optimal
sales volume decline or stabilize
prices, profitability diminish
profit becomes more a challenge of production/distribution efficiency than increased sales
consumer demand for spare parts, maintenance and or product servicing.

THE LAGGARDS

2. Apart from knowing the characteristics of the various stages in the Product Life Cycle (PLC), there are other variables that must be understood during the stages of the PLC which marketers must adhere to whenever a product is expected to be launched unto the market or otherwise.

Marketers must be able to explore the market segment that got the least attention from both academics and practitioners, the LAGGARDS. Being the last to adapt a product or idea, laggards are ignored as irrelevant market players by many companies.

For instance in his seminal work, Diffusion of Innovations, Everett M. Rogers laid down the process of consumer’s adoption lifecycle. Rogers’s segmented the market into five different groups namely, innovators, early adaptors, early majority, late majority and laggards.

Each segment has different characteristics, sizes and attributes and companies have to focus on one consumer segment at the time as these consumers have different needs and desires. Mostly innovators and early adaptors are the important segments when launching a new product. While small, these segments are very vital as they act as the entry point to bigger share of the market.

According to Everett M. Rogers, early adaptors are technologies that can see the potential of the new product. This group is more willing to pay higher prices for immature technology, suffer more pain from product malfunctions and defects. Other research also found that early adaptors have exploratory consumer bahaviour seeking novelty while being characterized by tolerance to ambiguity and low dogmatism (Manning, Bearden &Madden, 1995).

In comparison to innovators, laggards are mostly defined as the last group or segment of consumers to adopt a new product, service or an idea of any kind. Laggards seem to be ignored by both academics and practitioners. However, laggards are too big of a segment to be ignored. Everett M. Rogers (1995) also calculated that laggards comprise about 16% percent of the market. Other calculations put laggards at 21.9% percent of the market (Mahajan, Muller & Srivastava, 1990).

On this not it could be said that while it is difficult to come up with an accurate number, the consensus is however that the percentage is not small, therefore the understanding of laggards and their behavior may help in gaining adoption by late majority, laggards and maybe those who are considered to be non-adaptors.

Finally and demographically, laggards have been characterized by low level of education, low income status and low social mobility (Uhl, Andrus & Poulsen, 1970). For example spending Gh500 cedis on an iphone or ipad is not the best way to spend ones tight money supply. The scarce financial resources may force many people to wait for the product price to come down before making a purchase. This wait makes many people LAGGARDS.

However we should not deter companies from pursuing this segment, in fact, research suggests that laggards are as important as innovators and early adaptor. A recent study by Jacob Goldenberg and Shaul Oreg suggest that laggards do indeed become innovators in some cases (2006).