The concept of the product life cycle (PLC) is valuable for many reasons. Chiefly, it provides the marketing personnel with an understanding of the dynamics of the market and the ability to timely assess the change in customer demand and react to it (Bamford & Forrester 2010).
The first stage of PLC, introduction, provides strategic opportunities for a proper evaluation of the customer base needs and development of an appropriate set of marketing interventions. The growth phase is most valuable for the maximization of profit through logistical and operational management. The maturity stage provides the possibilities for interventions aimed at rejuvenating sales. Finally, the decline, which is usually deemed a phase with the fewest strategic capabilities, can still provide the means for additional revenue.
The first phase, introduction, consists of several elements, with the three most commonly recognized being the design and the provision of the new products. The former often emphasizes innovation, a critical component that presumably guarantees the product’s success among customers. While the role of innovation cannot be underestimated, it should not be mistaken for the element solely responsible for the successful product/service introduction.
A good example is Apple, the company famous for regularly launching the products which have little to no innovative features and often lose to the respective ones of their competitors but enjoy tremendous success on the regular basis (Auron 2016). While this is a rare example and does not prove the irrelevance of the innovation, it still means that a comprehensive and focused design-manufacturing interface coupled with clever marketing strategies can successfully substitute the need for innovation at least on some occasions. Thus, the interface is the most critical element of organizations strategically.
A crucial element interconnected with the design and manufacturing interface and contributing to other areas of the introduction phase is the quality function deployment (QFD). It is a complex and concise tool for processing the data on customers’ needs and satisfaction into a meaningful and approachable quantifiable form. In other words, QFD can translate intangible marketing requirements into measurable technical attributes, which then can be utilized to produce a module mix important for the design and operations interface (Wang & Chen 2012).
Since its introduction in the late 1960s, it continues being used today for the assessment of the various stages of the PLC, most notably the new product planning (NPP) (Ko & Chen 2014). Despite its concise nature allowing for a broad enclosure of the factors contributing to the evaluation process, some amendments have been proposed to enhance the process. For instance, Huertas-Garcia and Consolación-Segura (2009) have introduced a methodology which expanded the understanding of the consumer feedback and added value to the services by coupling QFD with statistical design of experiments.
Naturally, the use of QFD is not restricted to the initial phase. For instance, Apple utilizes customer satisfaction data throughout the process, even on the final stage of the PLC. The curve of the life cycle is notably different for most of Apple’s products, presenting an immediate spike during growth and similarly sharp decline, with the almost non-existent maturity phase (Downes & Nunes 2014). However, on the decline phase the revised version of the product is often being introduced, resulting in the next wave of popularity. Thus, instead of emphasizing the sustained growth and prolonged stability phases, Apple merges the decline phase with the introduction of the partially new product, providing a strategy that maintains the relatively predictable, and thus stable, revenue rates.
Reference List
Auron, J M 2016, The Decline of Apple: Marketing “Innovation” is not Innovation.
Bamford, D R & Forrester, P L 2010, Essential Guide to Operations Management, John Wiley & Sons, West Sussex.
Downes, L & Nunes, P 2014, The Faster a New Technology Takes Off, the Harder It Falls.
Huertas-Garcia, R & Consolación-Segura, C M 2009, ‘A framework for designing new products and services’, International Journal of Market Research, vol. 51, no. 6, pp. 819-840.
Ko, W C & Chen, L H 2014, ‘An approach of new product planning using quality function deployment and fuzzy linear programming model’, International Journal of Production Research, vol. 52, no. 6, pp. 1728-1743.
Wang, C H & Chen, J N 2012, ‘Using quality function deployment for collaborative product design and optimal selection of module mix’, Computers & Industrial Engineering, vol. 63, no. 4, pp.1030-1037.