Extending the Product Life Cycle

Overview

When a product reaches the maturity stage of the Product life cycle a company may choose to operate strategies to extend the life of the product. If the product is predicted to continue to be successful or an upgrade is soon to be released the company can use various methods to keep sales, else the product will be left as is to continue to the decline stage.

Extension Strategies

Examples of extension strategies are:

• Discounted price
• Increased advertising

Another strategy is added value.

Added Value

This is a widely used extension strategy. Large companies, in particular food producers, will slightly alter a product to make it seem new and attract new attention to the product. An example being a soft drink company producing a limited edition flavour of the product. This renews sales levels and gives the product continuing interest.

Launch in New Markets

Along with the other options,companies can also look at new markets for their old products to extend the PLC, a classical example here would be Toyota's Qualis which was close to being obselete in its major markets worldwide was launched in india and turned out to one of the biggest hits, thus extending its PLC

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