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Virtually alarm and thoughtful senior marketing executives are by now familiar with the concept of the production life bicycle. Fifty-fifty a handful of uniquely cosmopolitan and up-to-date corporate presidents have familiarized themselves with this tantalizing concept. However a contempo survey I took of such executives found none who used the concept in whatever strategic manner whatever, and pitifully few who used it in any kind of tactical fashion. It has remained—as have so many fascinating theories in economic science, physics, and sex—a remarkably durable simply nearly totally unemployed and seemingly unemployable piece of professional luggage whose presence in the rhetoric of professional discussions adds a much coveted but evidently unattainable legitimacy to the idea that marketing management is somehow a profession. There is, furthermore, a persistent feeling that the life cycle concept adds luster and believability to the insistent merits in certain circles that marketing is close to being some sort of science.1

The concept of the product life cycle is today at well-nigh the phase that the Copernican view of the universe was 300 years ago: a lot of people knew about information technology, but hardly anybody seemed to utilise it in any effective or productive way.

At present that so many people know and in some fashion understand the production life bike, it seems time to put it to piece of work. The object of this article is to suggest some means of using the concept effectively and of turning the noesis of its existence into a managerial instrument of competitive power.

Since the concept has been presented somewhat differently by different authors and for different audiences, information technology is useful to review it briefly hither and so that every reader has the aforementioned background for the discussion which follows later in this article.

Historical Blueprint

The life story of well-nigh successful products is a history of their passing through sure recognizable stages. These are shown in Exhibit I and occur in the post-obit guild:

Exhibit I Product Life Cycle—Entire Manufacture

Stage 1. Market Development

This is when a new product is first brought to market place, before there is a proved demand for it, and often before it has been fully proved out technically in all respects. Sales are low and creep forth slowly.

Stage 2. Marketplace Growth

Demand begins to accelerate and the size of the total market expands rapidly. Information technology might also exist called the "Takeoff Stage."

Phase iii. Market Maturity

Need levels off and grows, for the most part, only at the replacement and new family unit-germination charge per unit.

Stage 4. Market place Decline

The product begins to lose consumer entreatment and sales drift downward, such as when buggy whips lost out with the advent of automobiles and when silk lost out to nylon.

Three operating questions will chop-chop occur to the alert executive:

  • Given a proposed new product or service, how and to what extent can the shape and duration of each stage be predicted?
  • Given an existing product, how tin can 1 make up one's mind what phase it is in?
  • Given all this noesis, how can information technology be effectively used?

A brief farther elaboration of each stage will be useful earlier dealing with these questions in detail.

Evolution Phase

Bringing a new production to market is fraught with unknowns, uncertainties, and frequently unknowable risks. Generally, demand has to be "created" during the production's initial market place development stage. How long this takes depends on the production'south complication, its degree of newness, its fit into consumer needs, and the presence of competitive substitutes of one form or another. A proved cancer cure would require nearly no market development; information technology would become firsthand massive back up. An declared superior substitute for the lost-wax process of sculpture casting would take lots longer.

While it has been demonstrated time subsequently time that properly customer-oriented new product development is i of the primary conditions of sales and profit growth, what accept been demonstrated fifty-fifty more conclusively are the ravaging costs and frequent fatalities associated with launching new products. Nada seems to take more time, cost more money, involve more pitfalls, crusade more anguish, or break more careers than practice sincere and well-conceived new product programs. The fact is, about new products don't have any sort of classical life cycle bend at all. They have instead from the very outset an infinitely descending bend. The product non but doesn't go off the footing; information technology goes quickly under footing—six feet nether.

It is little wonder, therefore, that some disillusioned and badly burned companies have recently adopted a more conservative policy—what I telephone call the "used apple policy." Instead of aspiring to be the outset company to run across and seize an opportunity, they systematically avoid being starting time. They let others accept the first bite of the supposedly juicy apple that tantalizes them. They let others practise the pioneering. If the idea works, they rapidly follow suit. They say, in result, "The trouble with beingness a pioneer is that the pioneers become killed past the Indians." Hence, they say (thoroughly mixing their metaphors), "Nosotros don't have to become the offset bite of the apple tree. The 2d one is skillful enough." They are willing to swallow off a used apple, but they try to exist alert enough to brand sure it is but slightly used—that they at least get the second big bite, not the tenth skimpy i.

Growth Stage

The usual characteristic of a successful new production is a gradual ascent in its sales curve during the market place development phase. At some point in this ascent a marked increase in consumer need occurs and sales have off. The boom is on. This is the kickoff of Stage 2—the marketplace growth stage. At this point potential competitors who have been watching developments during Stage I jump into the fray. The beginning ones to become in are generally those with an uncommonly constructive "used apple policy." Some enter the market with carbon-copies of the originator'due south product. Others make functional and blueprint improvements. And at this signal product and brand differentiation begin to develop.

The ensuing fight for the consumer's patronage poses to the originating producer an entirely new set of bug. Instead of seeking ways of getting consumers to try the product, the originator now faces the more compelling problem of getting them to adopt his brand. This generally requires important changes in marketing strategies and methods. Simply the policies and tactics at present adopted will exist neither freely the sole choice of the originating producer, nor every bit experimental as they might have been during Stage I. The presence of competitors both dictates and limits what can easily be tried—such as, for instance, testing what is the best price level or the best channel of distribution.

Every bit the rate of consumer acceptance accelerates, it generally becomes increasingly easy to open new distribution channels and retail outlets. The consequent filling of distribution pipelines generally causes the entire industry's factory sales to rise more rapidly than store sales. This creates an exaggerated impression of profit opportunity which, in turn, attracts more competitors. Some of these will begin to charge lower prices considering of later advances in technology, production shortcuts, the demand to have lower margins in society to get distribution, and the like. All this in time inescapably moves the manufacture to the threshold of a new stage of competition.

Maturity Stage

This new phase is the market maturity stage. The commencement sign of its appearance is evidence of market place saturation. This ways that nearly consumer companies or households that are sales prospects will be owning or using the production. Sales now grow about on a par with population. No more distribution pipelines need be filled. Toll competition now becomes intense. Competitive attempts to achieve and hold brand preference now involve making finer and effectively differentiations in the product, in client services, and in the promotional practices and claims made for the product.

Typically, the market maturity stage forces the producer to concentrate on holding his distribution outlets, retaining his shelf infinite, and, in the end, trying to secure even more intensive distribution. Whereas during the market evolution phase the originator depended heavily on the positive efforts of his retailers and distributors to aid sell his product, retailers and distributors volition at present frequently have been reduced largely to being merchandise-displayers and gild-takers. In the instance of branded products in particular, the originator must now, more than e'er, communicate directly with the consumer.

The market maturity phase typically calls for a new kind of accent on competing more effectively. The originator is increasingly forced to entreatment to the consumer on the ground of price, marginal product differences, or both. Depending on the product, services and deals offered in connectedness with it are frequently the clearest and most effective forms of differentiation. Across these, there will exist attempts to create and promote fine product distinctions through packaging and advertizing, and to entreatment to special market segments. The market maturity phase can exist passed through quickly, every bit in the instance of about women'southward fashion fads, or it tin persist for generations with per capita consumption neither rising nor falling, as in the example of such staples equally men's shoes and industrial fasteners. Or maturity tin can persist, but in a state of gradual merely steady per capita pass up, as in the instance of beer and steel.

Turn down Stage

When market maturity tapers off and consequently comes to an stop, the product enters Stage 4—market pass up. In all cases of maturity and decline the industry is transformed. Few companies are able to weather condition the competitive storm. As need declines, the overcapacity that was already apparent during the period of maturity at present becomes endemic. Some producers run into the handwriting implacably on the wall but feel that with proper direction and cunning they will be ane of the survivors later on the industry-wide deluge they and then clearly foresee. To hasten their competitors' eclipse directly, or to frighten them into early voluntary withdrawal from the industry, they initiate a multifariousness of aggressively depressive tactics, propose mergers or buy-outs, and more often than not engage in activities that brand life thanklessly burdensome for all firms, and make expiry the inevitable effect for near of them. A few companies exercise indeed weather the storm, sustaining life through the constant descent that now conspicuously characterizes the industry. Production gets concentrated into fewer hands. Prices and margins go depressed. Consumers get bored. The only cases where there is whatsoever relief from this boredom and gradual euthanasia are where styling and fashion play some constantly revivifying function.

Preplanning Importance

Knowing that the lives of successful products and services are generally characterized past something like the pattern illustrated in Exhibit I can become the basis for important life-giving policies and practices. One of the greatest values of the life bike concept is for managers about to launch a new product. The starting time step for them is to effort to foresee the profile of the proposed product'southward cycle.

As with and so many things in business, and perhaps uniquely in marketing, it is almost impossible to brand universally useful suggestions regarding how to manage one'due south affairs. It is certainly especially hard to provide widely useful advice on how to foresee or predict the gradient and duration of a product'south life. Indeed, it is precisely considering so little specific twenty-four hour period-to-solar day guidance is possible in anything, and because no checklist has ever past itself been very useful to everyone for very long, that business management will probably never be a science—always an art—and will pay exceptional rewards to managers with rare talent, enormous energy, iron nerve, great capacity for assuming responsibility and begetting accountability.

But this does not mean that useful efforts cannot or should not be made to try to foresee the slope and elapsing of a new product's life. Time spent in attempting this kind of foresight non but helps assure that a more rational approach is brought to product planning and merchandising; besides, equally will be shown later, information technology can help create valuable lead time for important strategic and tactical moves after the product is brought to market place. Specifically, it tin be a groovy assistance in developing an orderly series of competitive moves, in expanding or stretching out the life of a product, in maintaining a clean product line, and in purposely phasing out dying and plush former products.2

Failure Possibilities…

As pointed out higher up, the length and gradient of the market place development stage depend on the product's complexity, its degree of newness, its fit into customer needs, and the presence of competitive substitutes.

The more unique or distinctive the newness of the production, the longer it generally takes to become information technology successfully off the ground. The world does not automatically beat a path to the human being with the better mousetrap.3 The world has to exist told, coddled, enticed, romanced, and even bribed (as with, for example, coupons, samples, free application aids, and the like). When the product's newness is distinctive and the chore it is designed to practice is unique, the public volition more often than not be less quick to perceive it as something it clearly needs or wants.

This makes life particularly hard for the innovator. He will take more than the usual difficulties of identifying those characteristics of his production and those supporting communications themes or devices which imply value to the consumer. Every bit a result, the more distinctive the newness, the greater the gamble of failure resulting either from insufficient working majuscule to sustain a long and frustrating flow of creating enough solvent customers to make the proffer pay, or from the disability to convince investors and bankers that they should put upward more money.

In any particular situation the more than people who will be involved in making a unmarried purchasing conclusion for a new production, the more fatigued out Phase I will exist. Thus in the highly fragmented construction materials industry, for example, success takes an exceptionally long time to take hold of concord; and having one time caught concur, it tends to hold tenaciously for a long fourth dimension—oftentimes too long. On the other paw, manner items conspicuously catch on fastest and last shortest. But considering way is so powerful, recently some companies in what often seem the least style influenced of industries (machine tools, for example) have shortened the market development stage past introducing elements of design and packaging fashion to their products.

What factors tend to prolong the market place evolution stage and therefore raise the risk of failure? The more than complex the production, the more distinctive its newness, the less influenced past fashion, the greater the number of persons influencing a single ownership decision, the more costly, and the greater the required shift in the customer'due south usual way of doing things—these are the conditions most likely to deadening things up and create problems.

…vs. Success Chances

Just issues besides create opportunities to control the forces arrayed against new production success. For example, the newer the product, the more important it becomes for the customers to have a favorable first experience with information technology. Newness creates a certain special visibility for the product, with a sure number of people standing on the sidelines to encounter how the first customers become on with information technology. If their first experience is unfavorable in some crucial style, this may have repercussions far out of proportion to the actual extent of the underfulfillment of the customers' expectations. But a favorable outset feel or application will, for the same reason, get a lot of unduly favorable publicity.

The possibility of exaggerated disillusionment with a poor first experience can heighten vital questions regarding the advisable channels of distribution for a new production. On the i hand, getting the product successfully launched may require having—every bit in the example of, say, the early days of home washing machines—many retailers who can requite consumers considerable aid in the production's correct utilization and thus help assure a favorable first experience for those buyers. On the other hand, channels that provide this kind of help (such as small neighborhood appliance stores in the instance of washing machines) during the market development stage may not be the ones best able to merchandise the production nigh successfully later when help in creating and personally reassuring customers is less of import than wide production distribution. To the extent that channel decisions during this first phase sacrifice some of the requirements of the marketplace development phase to some of the requirements of later stages, the charge per unit of the product's acceptance by consumers at the outset may be delayed.

In entering the market evolution phase, pricing decisions are often particularly hard for the producer to brand. Should he fix an initially high price to compensate his investment chop-chop—i.e., "skim the cream"—or should he set a low price to discourage potential competition—i.e., "exclusion"? The answer depends on the innovator's estimate of the probable length of the product'southward life bicycle, the caste of patent protection the product is probable to enjoy, the amount of capital needed to go the product off the ground, the elasticity of demand during the early life of the product, and many other factors. The conclusion that is finally made may affect non only the charge per unit at which the production catches on at the beginning, merely even the elapsing of its full life. Thus some products that are priced too depression at the outset (particularly manner goods, such as the chemise, or sack, a few years agone) may catch on and then quickly that they become short-lived fads. A slower rate of consumer acceptance might oft extend their life cycles and raise the total profits they yield.

The actual slope, or rate of the growth stage, depends on some of the same things as does success or failure in Stage I. But the extent to which patent exclusiveness can play a critical part is sometimes inexplicably forgotten. More than ofttimes than i might offhand expect, holders of potent patent positions fail to recognize either the marketplace-development virtue of making their patents bachelor to competitors or the market-destroying possibilities of failing to control more effectively their competitors' use of such products.

Generally speaking, the more than producers there are of a new product, the more try goes into developing a market for it. The net consequence is very likely to be more rapid and steeper growth of the full market. The originator's market share may fall, but his total sales and profits may rise more than rapidly. Certainly this has been the example in contempo years of color idiot box; RCA's eagerness to make its tubes available to competitors reflects its recognition of the power of numbers over the power of monopoly.

On the other hand, the failure to gear up and enforce appropriate quality standards in the early days of polystyrene and polyethylene drinking spectacles and cups produced such sloppy, junior goods that it took years to recover the consumer'south confidence and revive the growth pattern.

But to try to see in advance what a product's growth pattern might be is not very useful if one fails to distinguish between the industry blueprint and the pattern of the single firm—for its particular brand. The manufacture's wheel will almost certainly be different from the bicycle of individual firms. Moreover, the life bicycle of a given production may be different for dissimilar companies in the same industry at the same bespeak in fourth dimension, and it certainly affects unlike companies in the same industry differently.

Originator'south Burdens

The company with most at pale is the original producer—the company that launches an entirely new production. This company by and large bears most of the costs, the tribulations, and certainly the risks of developing both the product and the market.

Competitive Force per unit area

Once the innovator demonstrates during the market development stage that a solid demand exists, armies of imitators rush in to capitalize on and help create the boom that becomes the marketplace growth, or takeoff, stage. As a effect, while exceedingly rapid growth will now narrate the product'south total demand, for the originating company its growth stage paradoxically at present becomes truncated. Information technology has to share the nail with new competitors. Hence the potential charge per unit of acceleration of its own takeoff is diminished and, indeed, may actually fail to last as long as the industry's. This occurs not only because at that place are so many competitors, but, as nosotros noted earlier, besides considering competitors often come in with production improvements and lower prices. While these developments generally help keep the market expanding, they greatly restrict the originating company's charge per unit of growth and the length of its takeoff stage.

All this can be illustrated past comparison the curve in Showroom Two with that in Showroom I, which shows the life bicycle for a product. During Phase I in Exhibit I there is mostly just ane company—the originator—even though the whole exhibit represents the entire industry. In Stage I the originator is the entire manufacture. But by Stage two he shares the industry with many competitors. Hence, while Exhibit I is an industry curve, its Stage I represents only a unmarried company's sales.

Exhibit II Product Life Cycle—Originating Company

Exhibit II shows the life cycle of the originator's make—his own sales curve, not that of the industry. It tin can be seen that betwixt Year 1 and Yr 2 his sales are ascension about as rapidly as the manufacture's. Merely after Year 2, while industry sales in Exhibit I are withal in vigorous expansion, the originator's sales bend in Exhibit II has begun to dull its ascent. He is at present sharing the boom with a not bad many competitors, some of whom are much better positioned now than he is.

Profit Squeeze

In the process the originator may begin to encounter a serious squeeze on his profit margins. Exhibit 3, which traces the profits per unit of the originator's sales, illustrates this point. During the market place development stage his per-unit profits are negative. Sales book is too low at existing prices. Nonetheless, during the market growth stage unit profits blast every bit output rises and unit production costs fall. Total profits rise enormously. It is the presence of such lush profits that both attracts and ultimately destroys competitors.

Exhibit Three Unit of measurement Profit Contribution Life Cycle—Originating Company

Consequently, while (ane) industry sales may nevertheless exist rising nicely (every bit at the Year iii indicate in Exhibit I), and (two) while the originating company's sales may at the same point of time take begun to slow down noticeably (as in Showroom Two), and (3) while at this point the originator'southward total profits may however exist rise considering his volume of sales is huge and on a slight upward trend, his profits per unit will often have taken a drastic downward course. Indeed, they will frequently have done then long before the sales curve flattened. They will accept topped out and begun to decline perhaps around the Twelvemonth 2 point (as in Exhibit III). By the fourth dimension the originator's sales begin to flatten out (as at the Year 3 point in Exhibit 2), unit profits may actually be approaching zero (as in Exhibit Three).

At this point more competitors are in the industry, the rate of industry need growth has slowed somewhat, and competitors are cutting prices. Some of them do this in society to get business, and others do information technology because their costs are lower attributable to the fact that their equipment is more mod and productive.

The manufacture's Stage 3—maturity—generally lasts equally long every bit there are no important competitive substitutes (such equally, for case, aluminum for steel in "tin" cans), no desperate shifts in influential value systems (such as the end of female person modesty in the 1920'southward and the consequent devastation of the market place for veils), no major changes in ascendant fashions (such as the hr-glass female person form and the end of waist cinchers), no changes in the demand for primary products which utilize the product in question (such equally the effect of the decline of new rails road expansion on the demand for railroad ties), and no changes either in the rate of obsolescence of the product or in the character or introductory charge per unit of product modifications.

Maturity can terminal for a long time, or it can really never be attained. Way goods and fad items sometimes surge to sudden heights, hesitate momentarily at an uneasy peak, and then quickly drop off into total obscurity.

Phase Recognition

The various characteristics of the stages described above will help i to recognize the phase a item product occupies at whatsoever given time. But retrospect volition e'er be more accurate than current sight. Perhaps the best way of seeing one'southward current stage is to try to foresee the side by side stage and piece of work backwards. This approach has several virtues:

  • It forces one to await ahead, constantly to endeavour to reforesee his hereafter and competitive surroundings. This will have its own rewards. As Charles F. Kettering, mayhap the concluding of Detroit's archaic inventors and probably the greatest of all its inventors, was fond of saying, "We should all exist concerned about the future because that's where we'll take to spend the rest of our lives." By looking at the future one can better assess the land of the present.
  • Looking ahead gives more than perspective to the present than looking at the present alone. Most people know more well-nigh the present than is good for them. Information technology is neither good for you nor helpful to know the present too well, for our perception of the present is too often too heavily distorted by the urgent pressures of day-to-day events. To know where the present is in the continuum of competitive time and events, it often makes more sense to effort to know what the future volition bring, and when information technology volition bring it, than to try to know what the nowadays itself really contains.
  • Finally, the value of knowing what stage a product occupies at any given time resides only in the fashion that fact is used. But its utilize is e'er in the time to come. Hence a prediction of the future environment in which the information will exist used is often more than functional for the constructive capitalization on knowledge almost the present than knowledge nigh the present itself.

Sequential Actions

The life wheel concept tin exist effectively employed in the strategy of both existing and new products. For purposes of continuity and clarity, the remainder of this article will describe some of the uses of the concept from the early stages of new product planning through the later stages of keeping the product profitably alive. The primary discussion volition focus on what I telephone call a policy of "life extension" or "market stretching."4

To the extent that Exhibits II and Three outline the classical patterns of successful new products, one of the constant aims of the originating producer should exist to avoid the severe field of study imposed past an early turn a profit squeeze in the market growth phase, and to avoid the wear and waste product so typical of the market maturity stage. Hence the post-obit proposition would seem reasonable: when a visitor develops a new product or service, it should endeavor to plan at the very starting time a series of actions to be employed at various subsequent stages in the product's existence then that its sales and profit curves are constantly sustained rather than following their usual declining slope.

In other words, accelerate planning should be directed at extending, or stretching out, the life of the product. Information technology is this idea of planning in accelerate of the actual launching of a new production to take specific actions later in its life wheel—deportment designed to sustain its growth and profitability—which appears to have great potential equally an instrument of long-term product strategy.

Nylon's Life

How this might piece of work for a product can be illustrated by looking at the history of nylon. The way in which nylon'due south booming sales life has been repeatedly and systematically extended and stretched tin serve as a model for other products. What has happened in nylon may not have been purposely planned that way at the kickoff, but the results are quite equally if they had been planned.

The showtime nylon end-uses were primarily armed forces—parachutes, thread, rope. This was followed by nylon's entry into the circular knit marketplace and its consequent domination of the women's hosiery business organisation. Hither it developed the kind of steadily ascent growth and profit curves that every executive dreams about. After some years these curves began to flatten out. Only before they flattened very noticeably, Du Pont had already adult measures designed to revitalize sales and profits. It did several things, each of which is demonstrated graphically in Exhibit 4. This exhibit and the explanation which follows take some liberties with the actual facts of the nylon situation in society to highlight the points I wish to make. But they take no liberties with the essential requisites of product strategy.

Exhibit IV Hypothetical Life Wheel—Nylon

Betoken A of Showroom IV shows the hypothetical point at which the nylon bend (dominated at this indicate by hosiery) flattened out. If naught further had been done, the sales curve would accept continued along the flattened pace indicated by the dotted line at Point A. This is also the hypothetical signal at which the kickoff systematic try was fabricated to extend the product's life. Du Pont, in effect, took certain "deportment" which pushed hosiery sales up rather than standing the path implied by the dotted line extension of the curve at Signal A. At Indicate A action #ane pushed an otherwise flat curve upward.

At points B, C, and D still other new sales and profit expansion "actions" (#2, #3, #four, and so forth) were taken. What were these actions? Or, more usefully, what was their strategic content? What did they effort to do? They involved strategies that tried to expand sales via four dissimilar routes:

1. Promoting more frequent usage of the production amidst electric current users.

ii. Developing more varied usage of the production among current users.

3. Creating new users for the production by expanding the market.

4. Finding new uses for the bones textile.

Frequent Usage.

Du Pont studies had shown an increasing trend toward "bareleggedness" among women. This was coincident with the trend toward more casual living and a declining perception among teenagers of what might be called the "social necessity" of wearing stockings. In the calorie-free of those findings, one arroyo to propping upwardly the flattening sales curves might have been to reiterate the social necessity of wearing stockings at all times. That would have been a sales-building action, though obviously hard and exceedingly costly. But information technology could conspicuously have fulfilled the strategy of promoting more frequent usage among electric current users equally a means of extending the product'due south life.

Varied Usage.

For Du Pont, this strategy took the form of an attempt to promote the "fashion smartness" of tinted hose and later of patterned and highly textured hosiery. The idea was to raise each woman's inventory of hosiery by obsolescing the perception of hosiery as a fashion staple that came simply in a narrow range of browns and pinks. Hosiery was to be converted from a "neutral" accompaniment to a key ingredient of fashion, with a "suitable" tint and blueprint for each outer garment in the lady'due south wardrobe.

This not only would raise sales by expanding women'due south hosiery wardrobes and stores' inventories, simply would open the door for annual tint and pattern obsolescence much the same as at that place is an annual color obsolescence in outer garments. Across that, the use of colour and design to focus attending on the leg would assist arrest the decline of the leg as an element of sexual practice appeal—a trend which some researchers had discerned and which, they claimed, damaged hosiery sales.

New Users.

Creating new users for nylon hosiery might conceivably have taken the course of attempting to legitimize the necessity of wearing hosiery among early on teenagers and subteenagers. Advertisement, public relations, and merchandising of youthful social and style leaders would take been called for.

New Uses.

For nylon, this tactic has had many triumphs—from varied types of hosiery, such every bit stretch stockings and stretch socks, to new uses, such every bit rugs, tires, bearings, and and so forth. Indeed, if at that place had been no farther production innovations designed to create new uses for nylon after the original military machine, miscellaneous, and circular knit uses, nylon consumption in 1962 would accept reached a saturation level at approximately l meg pounds annually.

Instead, in 1962 consumption exceeded 500 1000000 pounds. Exhibit V demonstrates how the continuous development of new uses for the basic material constantly produced new waves of sales. The exhibit shows that in spite of the growth of the women'south stocking market, the cumulative result of the war machine, round knit, and miscellaneous grouping would have been a flattened sales curve by 1958. (Nylon's entry into the broadwoven market in 1944 substantially raised sales above what they would have been. Withal, the sales of broadwoven, circular knit, and armed services and miscellaneous groupings peaked in 1957.)

Exhibit V Innovation of New Products Postpones the Fourth dimension of Total Maturity—Nylon Industry Source: Modernistic Textiles Magazine, Feb 1964, p. 33. © 1962 by Jordan P. Yale

Had it not been for the add-on of new uses for the same basic cloth—such as warp knits in 1945, tire cord in 1948, textured yarns in 1955, carpet yarns in 1959, and so forth—nylon would not have had the spectacularly rising consumption curve it has so conspicuously had. At various stages information technology would take exhausted its existing markets or been forced into decline by competing materials. The systematic search for new uses for the basic (and improved) textile extended and stretched the product's life.

Other Examples

Few companies seem to employ in any systematic or planned way the four product lifestretching steps described above. Withal the successful application of this kind of stretching strategy has characterized the history of such well-known products every bit General Foods Corporation'south "Jell-O" and Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co.'s "Scotch" tape.v

Clot-O was a pioneer in the easy-to-gear up gelatin dessert field. The soundness of the production concept and the excellence of its early marketing activities gave it beautifully ascending sales and turn a profit curves virtually from the start. Only subsequently some years these curves predictably began to flatten out. Scotch record was also a pioneer product in its field. Once perfected, the production gained rapid market acceptance because of a sound product concept and an aggressive sales system. Merely, again, in time the sales and profit curves began to flatten out. Before they flattened out very much, all the same, 3M, like General Foods, had already developed measures to sustain the early stride of sales and profits.

Both of these companies extended their products' lives past, in effect, doing all 4 of the things Du Pont did with nylon—creating more than frequent usage among current users, more than varied usage among current users, new users, and new uses for the basic "materials":

(1) The General Foods arroyo to increasing the frequency of serving Jell-O amid current users was, substantially, to increase the number of flavors. From Don Wilson's famous "six delicious flavors," Jell-O moved up to over a dozen. On the other hand, 3M helped enhance sales amid its electric current users by developing a diversity of handy Scotch tape dispensers which made the product easier to use.

(2) Creation of more than varied usage of Jell-O among current dessert users involved its promotion equally a base for salads and the facilitation of this usage past the development of a diversity of vegetable flavored Jell-O's. Similarly, 3M adult a line of colored, patterned, waterproof, invisible, and write-on Scotch tapes which accept enjoyed considerable success equally sealing and decorating items for vacation and gift wrapping.

(3) Jell-O sought to create new users by pinpointing people who could not accept Clot-O every bit a popular dessert or salad product. Hence during the Metrecal nail Clot-O employed an advert theme that successfully affixed to the production a mode-oriented weight control entreatment. Similarly, 3M introduced "Rocket" record, a production much like Scotch tape but lower in cost, and likewise adult a line of commercial cellophane tapes of diverse widths, lengths, and strengths. These actions broadened production use in commercial and industrial markets.

(4) Both Jell-O and 3M take sought out new uses for the basic textile. It is known, for instance, that women consumers use powdered gelatin dissolved in liquids equally a means of strengthening their fingernails. Both men and women use it in the same way as a bone-edifice agent. Hence Jell-O introduced a "completely flavorless" Jell-O for but these purposes. 3M has also adult new uses for the basic material—from "doublecoated" tape (adhesive on both sides) which competes with ordinary liquid adhesives, to the reflecting tape which festoons countless automobile bumpers, to marking strips which compete with paint.

Extension Strategies

The existence of the kinds of production life cycles illustrated in Exhibits I and II and the unit profit cycle in Exhibit Iii suggests that in that location may be considerable value for people involved in new product work to begin planning for the extension of the lives of their products even before these products are formally launched. To programme for new life-extending infusions of effort (as in Exhibit IV) at this pre-introduction phase can be extremely useful in three profoundly important ways.

1. It generates an agile rather than a reactive production policy.

It systematically structures a company'south long-term marketing and product development efforts in advance, rather than each effort or activeness being merely a stop-gap response to the urgent pressures of repeated competitive thrusts and declining profits. The life-extension view of product policy enforces thinking and planning ahead—thinking in some systematic manner about the moves likely to be fabricated by potential competitors, almost possible changes in consumer reactions to the production, and the required selling activities which best accept advantage of these conditional events.

2. It lays out a long-term plan designed to infuse new life into the product at the right time, with the right degree of care, and with the right corporeality of endeavor.

Many activities designed to enhance the sales and profits of existing products or materials are ofttimes undertaken without regard to their relationship to each other or to timing—the optimum betoken of consumer readiness for such activities or the bespeak of optimum competitive effectiveness. Conscientious advance planning, long before the demand for such activity arises, can help clinch that the timing, the care, and the efforts are advisable to the situation.

For example, information technology appears extremely hundred-to-one that the boom in women's hair coloring and pilus tinting products would accept been as spectacular if vigorous efforts to sell these products had preceded the boom in hair sprays and chemical hair fixers. The latter helped create a powerful consumer consciousness of hair fashions considering they made it relatively easy to create and wear fashionable hair styles. In one case it became easy for women to have fashionable hair styles, the resulting way consciousness helped open the door for hair colors and tints. It could non take happened the other mode around, with colors and tints first creating fashion consciousness and thus raising the sales of sprays and fixers. Because understanding the reason for this precise order of events is essential for appreciating the importance of early pre-introduction life-extension planning, it is useful to become into a bit of particular. Consider:

For women, setting their hair has been a perennial problem for centuries. First, the length and treatment of their hair is ane of the most obvious means in which they distinguish themselves from men. Hence to be bonny in that stardom becomes crucial. Second, hair frames and highlights the face, much similar an attractive wooden border frames and highlights a cute painting. Thus hair styling is an important chemical element in accentuating the appearance of a woman's facial features. 3rd, since the hair is long and soft, information technology is difficult to hold in an bonny system. It gets mussed in sleep, air current, damp atmospheric condition, sporting activities, and so along.

Therefore, the effective system of a woman'southward pilus is understandably her get-go priority in pilus care. An unkempt brunette would proceeds nothing from making herself into a blond. Indeed, in a land where blonds are in the minority, the switch from being an unkempt brunette to being an unkempt blond would but draw attending to her sloppiness. But once the trouble of arrangement became easily "solved" by sprays and fixers, colors and tints could become big business organization, especially amongst women whose pilus was starting time to turn gray.

The same order of priorities applies in industrial products. For case, it seems quite inconceivable that many manufacturing plants would easily have accepted the replacement of the sometime unmarried-spindle, constantly man-tended screw automobile by a computerized tape-tended, multiple-spindle machine. The mechanical tending of the multiple-spindle machine was a necessary intermediate step, if for no other reason than that it required a lesser piece of work-flow change, and certainly a lesser conceptual jump for the companies and the machine-tending workers involved.

For Jell-O, it is unlikely that vegetable flavors would have been very successful before the idea of gelatin as a salad base had been pretty well accepted. Similarly, the promotion of colored and patterned Scotch tape as a souvenir and decorative seal might not have been every bit successful if section stores had not, as the event of their drive to compete more finer with mass merchandisers past offering more than customer services, previously demonstrated to the consumer what could be done to wrap and decorate gifts.

3. Perhaps the most important benefit of engaging in advance, pre-introduction planning for sales-extending, market-stretching activities later in the product'south life is that this practice forces a company to adopt a wider view of the nature of the product information technology is dealing with.

Indeed, it may even strength the adoption of a wider view of the company's business organization. Take the case of Jell-O. What is its product? Over the years Jell-O has get the brand umbrella for a wide range of dessert products, including cornstarch-base puddings, pie fillings, and the new "Whip'due north Chill," a lite dessert product similar to a Bavarian Creme or French Mousse. On the footing of these products, it might exist said that the Jell-O Division of General Foods is in the "dessert technology" business.

In the case of tape, perhaps 3M has gone fifty-fifty further in this technological approach to its business concern. It has a particular expertise (applied science) on which it has built a constantly expanding business. This expertise can exist said to exist that of bonding things (adhesives in the case of Scotch tape) to other things, peculiarly to thin materials. Hence nosotros come across 3M developing scores of profitable items, including electronic recording tape (bonding electron-sensitive materials to tape), and "Thermo-Fax" duplicating equipment and supplies (bonding oestrus reactive materials to paper).

Determination

For companies interested in continued growth and profits, successful new production strategy should be viewed as a planned totality that looks alee over some years. For its own adept, new product strategy should try to predict in some measure the likelihood, character, and timing of competitive and marketplace events. While prediction is always hazardous and seldom very accurate, it is undoubtedly far amend than not trying to predict at all. In fact, every product strategy and every business decision inescapably involves making a prediction nigh the future, about the market, and almost competitors. To be more systematically aware of the predictions one is making so that one acts on them in an offensive rather than a defensive or reactive fashion—this is the real virtue of preplanning for market place stretching and production life extension. The result volition be a product strategy-that includes some sort of plan for a timed sequence of provisional moves.

Fifty-fifty earlier inbound the market evolution stage, the originator should make a judgment regarding the probable length of the product's normal life, taking into account the possibilities of expanding its uses and users. This judgment will besides assistance determine many things—for example, whether to price the product on a skimming or a penetration basis, or what kind of relationship the visitor should develop with its resellers.

These considerations are of import because at each stage in a product'due south life cycle each management determination must consider the competitive requirements of the next stage. Thus a decision to establish a strong branding policy during the marketplace growth stage might help to insulate the brand against strong price competition later; a decision to establish a policy of "protected" dealers in the market evolution stage might facilitate betoken-of-sale promotions during the market growth state, and so on. In short, having a articulate idea of time to come product development possibilities and marketplace development opportunities should reduce the likelihood of becoming locked into forms of merchandising that might possibly bear witness undesirable.

This kind of advance thinking about new product strategy helps management avert other pitfalls. For case, advertising campaigns that look successful from a short-term view may injure in the adjacent stage of the life cycle. Thus at the outset Metrecal advertising used a strong medical theme. Sales boomed until imitative competitors successfully emphasized fashionable slimness. Metrecal had projected itself as the dietary for the overweight consumer, an image that proved far less appealing than that of being the dietary for people who were fashion-smart. But Metrecal'south original appeal had been so stiff and then well fabricated that it was a formidable task subsequently on to modify people'south impressions virtually the product. Obviously, with more than careful long-range planning at the outset, a product's image tin be more carefully positioned and advertising tin have more than clearly divers objectives.

Recognizing the importance of an orderly series of steps in the introduction of sales-edifice "deportment" for new products should be a central ingredient of long-term production planning. A carefully preplanned program for market expansion, even earlier a new production is introduced, tin can have powerful virtues. The establishment of a rational programme for the future can also help to guide the direction and pace of the on-going technical research in support of the product. Although departures from such a plan volition surely have to be made to suit unexpected events and revised judgments, the program puts the company in a meliorate position to brand things happen rather than constantly having to react to things that are happening.

It is of import that the originator doesnot delay this long-term planning until later on the product's introduction. How the production should exist introduced and the many uses for which it might be promoted at the outset should be a role of a careful consideration of the optimum sequence of suggested product appeals and product uses. Consideration must focus non but on optimum things to practise, but as importantly on their optimum sequence—for example, what the order of use of various appeals should be and what the gild of suggested product uses should be. If Jell-O'due south beginning suggested use had been every bit a nutrition nutrient, its chances of later making a large and easy bear upon in the gelatin dessert market undoubtedly would take been greatly macerated. Similarly, if nylon hosiery had been promoted at the first equally a functional daytime-wear hosiery, its ability to supercede silk as the acceptable high-fashion hosiery would have been greatly diminished.

To illustrate the virtue of pre-introduction planning for a production'southward later life, suppose a company has adult a nonpatentable new product—say, an ordinary kitchen salt shaker. Suppose that nobody at present has any kind of shaker. Ane might say, before launching it, that (1) it has a potential market of "ten" 1000000 household, institutional, and commercial consumers, (2) in two years market maturity volition prepare in, and (3) in one twelvemonth profit margins volition fall because of the entry of competition. Hence one might lay out the post-obit plan:

I. Stop of commencement yr: aggrandize marketplace among electric current users

Ideas—new designs, such as sterling shaker for formal use, "masculine" shaker for barbecue use, antiquarian shaker for "Early on American" households, miniature shaker for each table identify setting, moisture-proof blueprint for beach picnics.

Ii. Terminate of second year: aggrandize market to new users

Ideas—designs for children, quaffer pattern for beer drinkers in confined, blueprint for sadists to rub salt into open wounds.

III. End of third twelvemonth: find new uses

Ideas—make identical production for use every bit a pepper shaker, as decorative garlic salt shaker, shaker for household scouring powder, shaker to sprinkle silicon dust on parts being machined in automobile shops, and so forth.

This endeavor to prethink methods of reactivating a flattening sales curve far in advance of its condign flat enables product planners to assign priorities to each job, and to plan future production expansion and upper-case letter and marketing requirements in a systematic fashion. It prevents 1's trying to practice too many things at once, results in priorities beingness determined rationally instead of every bit adventitious consequences of the timing of new ideas, and disciplines both the production development effort that is launched in back up of a production's growth and the marketing attempt that is required for its connected success.

1. For discussions of the scientific claims or potentials of marketing, run across George Schwartz, Development of Marketing Theory (Cincinnati Ohio, Southward-Western Publishing Co., 1963); and Reavis Cox, Wroe Alderson, and Stanley J. Shapiro, editors, Theory in Marketing (Homewood, Illinois, Richard D. Irwin, Inc., Second Series, 1964).

2. Encounter Philip Kotler, "Phasing Out Weak Products," HBR March–April 1965, p. 107.

3. For perhaps the ultimate example of how the world does not beat such a path, see the example of the man who really, and to his painful regret, made a "better" mousetrap, in John B. Matthews, Jr., R. D. Buzzell, Theodore Levitt, and Ronald E. Frank, Marketing:An Introductory Analysis (New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1964), p. iv.

four. For related ideas on discerning opportunities for product revivification, see Lee Adler, "A New Orientation for Plotting a Marketing Strategy," Business Horizons, Wintertime 1964, p. 37.

5. I am indebted to my colleague, Dr. Derek A. Newton, for these examples and other helpful suggestions.

A version of this article appeared in the November 1965 issue of Harvard Concern Review.