Question

Create an illustration of the complete product life cycle as developed in class. Properly label, at minimum, the following: product life cycle (PLC), product maturity cycle (PML), emerging needs, nascent technology, New Products Committee, MNR, “fuzzy front end,” S-curve, technological discontinuity, and technological breakthrough. You are being asked to insert an illustrative S-Curve into the original PLC. B) What is the significance of the S-Curve to firms that depend upon new products for company growth? What does the curve’s shape illustrate? C) Explain what is assumed to be happening when a new curve intersects the established curve in the S-Curve illustration. D) The entire curve you have created could represent a single product, many line additions, or an entire of group of products over time, from one or several competing firms in an industry. How can this be so? Explain in detail

Answer 1

Ans: To begin with the explanation for all the above questions. Let me answer the first question and explain in brief what exactly is Product Life Cycle (PLC).

Product Life Cycle (PLC) – This is basically the methodology which is used for ages as of now to deal with how, when and what questions to build a strategy and have a plan in place for a new product to be introduced into the market.

PLC has different stage of it, namely the ones listed below.

1. Introduction
2. Growth
3. Maturity
4. Decline

1. Introduction – Is a phase in Product Life Cycle, where the complete strategy is built in to understand how we as a company will be placing the product that we have newly created into the market.
   • Emerging needs - This is one of the important aspect while introducing any new product into the market. Product lifecycle beings with this aspect itself, as to is there any real world need of this product? or Is there any practical use case of this product? Or will this product sustain for a longer duration in the market? All these need to be thought and are part of introductory stage of PLC.
   • Nascent technology – This basically means, for any new product being thought is there any requirement of using nascent (new) technology to be used for the effective and efficient outcome of the product.
   • MNR – This is a short form for Module Not Relevant (MNR). Basically, in simple terms if any module or part of a product being developed is not required then that module will be removed from the product with the tagline of MNR.
   • Fuzzy Front End – This is basically the “Phase 0” or pre-product development phase where all the requirements, product planning, brainstorming will be taking place within the team and then the product will be stepped on to a formal development phase.
2. Growth – Once all the introduction of the product into the market is done, what next? Build the strategy around the product to make it more significant among the right set of users of the product in the market. This is also coined as “Take off stage” in PLC
3. Maturity - And when the market is all live and running swiftly with the right set of users, it is time now to identify and set what are different uses of the product? Since, the product is all good in the market and running at a constant pace. It is called as maturity period since the line in the graph of product life cycle is running constantly straight neither inclining or declining. This phase of PLC is also coined as “Product Maturity Cycle”, since this all by itself has further breakdowns of steps to be followed to sustain the product in the market and not let it decline.
4. Decline – This is a phase in the product life cycle where, sales of the product continue to drop significantly if no proper precaution is taken during the maturity or growth phase of the product.

S – Curve: Below is the illustrative example of the PLC with all the different stages of Product Lifecycle are graphically analysed using the S-Curve model, which is graphical representation of the stages of product life cycle. Vertical axis in the PLC Graph indicates Sales factor and Horizontal axis indicates the Time factor.

Technological Discontinuity: This is the shortfall of the technologies being used for the product lifecycle. If for a given moment of time in near future will the technology being used or introduced through the product be out dated or declined by the users? Such kind of analysis is also a part of PLC.

Technological Breakthrough: Being one of the pivotal pointers in the PLC process, having a brief understanding of the technologies used or being introduced into the new product will make a significant impact on the product life cycle. As per the ever-growing technological advancements and needs in the present scenario, making technological breakthroughs into the market through the new product being introduced will make a huge difference for the Product Life Cycle.

B) What is the significance of the S-Curve to firms that depend upon new products for company growth? What does the curve’s shape illustrate?

Ans – Having explained in detail about the stages of PLC, S-Curve plays a significant role to the firms that depend on new product developments for the company’s growth is basically because of the following factors.

• Revenue Factor– Because revenue of these companies solely depends on new products development.
• Risk Factor – Since, there will lot of risk involved for the companies sustaining only on the development of new products

Thus, making all the strategic decisions and analysing the market condition of the new products being developed using the S-Curve will give the companies a leading edge to make effective decisions and eventually have a steady growth in their respective segments.

S – Curve shape in the graph is a clear indicator of whether the company is making a steady growth or as attained maturity or is in declining phase based on the positioning of the curve path.

• If Curve path is inclining steadily or aggressively, product is growing significantly.
• If there is a least or no increase in the curve path, then product is lagging behind in its growth.
• If there is an increase in the curve path and has attained a steady horizontal path, then it is in the maturity phase.
• If the curve path is in declining shape, then it is an indicative that the product is being defeated by any other product in the market and needs an action to be taken to stand back again in the market on a urgent basis.

C) Explain what is assumed to be happening when a new curve intersects the established curve in the S-Curve illustration.

Ans: If a new curve intersects to the established curve, it is an indicative that the firm has learnt from the products established curve, that has taken appropriate measures to overcome the decline phase and start over again with the significant S-Curve to sustain and grow again their respective market segment.

D) The entire curve you have created could represent a single product, many line additions, or an entire of group of products over time, from one or several competing firms in an industry. How can this be so?

Ans: This can definitely be so, by having a keen eye on the progress or development of the single or multiple product lines or entire range of products by a single or multiple firms basically to learn and understand the emerging trends and status of the companies launching the products and evolving around the new products based on the new technological advancements and so on and so forth.

To understand this better, let me quote an example of “Nylon”.

There a systematic and illustrated history of Nylons presence in the market. Firstly, it was more commonly used for military related parachutes, ropes, etc. Followed by its introduction into the women’s hosiery market then its curves began to flatten for a longer time. But, before they could began declining, DuPont developed the measures to re-increase the sales and again increased the life cycle of nylon product.