Discuss the stages in product development cycle and the importance of each stage.
Answers
The Product Life Cycle is the set of commonly identified stages in the life of commercial products. The stages which a product cycles through during its lifespan are: Development, Introduction, Growth, Maturity and Decline.
Product Development stage
The Product development stage is the first part of the Product Life Cycle. This stage is not only about building the product, it includes carrying out research and testing too.
Market research and competitor analysis are the main part of the research for the development stage. These are done to get an idea of the potential growth for the product, and to build a business case to validate the product.
Gathering feedback from test users and testing the product are also vital to the development of the product.
Once the development of the product is complete it is ready for the introduction stage.
Introduction stage
This is the stage in which the product is initially promoted. Public awareness is very important to the success of a product. If people don’t know about the product they won’t go out and buy it.
There are two different strategies you can use to introduce your product to consumers. You can use either a penetration strategy or a skimming strategy. If a penetration strategy is used then prices are set very high initially and then gradually lowered over time. This is a good strategy to use if there are few competitors for your product. Profits are high with this strategy but there is also a great deal of risk. If people don’t want to pay high prices you may lose out.
The second pricing strategy is a skimming strategy. In this case you set your prices very low at launch and gradually increase them. This is a good strategy to use if there are many of competitors who control a large portion of the market. Profits are not a concern under this strategy. The most important thing is to get your product known and worry about making money at