10-day MBA: Marketing- PLC and 4p’ analysis

Stages in the Product Life Cycle
• Introduction
• Growth
• Maturity
• Decline
• Individual brands may not follow this pattern
o sometimes a product may crash and not get to the maturity stage
• Each market should be carefully defined
o depends on where on the planet you are talking, some products are at different stages in the PLC depending on the country
• Product Life Cycle - length of time at each stage - varies
o depends on the products
o can be a few months in each stage
o or it can be years


The major marketing management decisions can be classified in one of the following four categories:

* Product
* Price
* Place (distribution)
* Promotion

These variables are known as the marketing mix or the 4 P's of marketing. They are the variables that marketing managers can control in order to best satisfy customers in the target market.