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Lifebuoy

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How is the concept of PLC useful?

Product life cycle concept is useful for firms to develop sustainability strategies towards their products (i.e. how to allocate marketing funds in accordance with the phase of the cycle the product has entered). The PLC defines that a product goes through a cycle during their lifetime, which starts when the product is launched where the product cycle grows until one day, it falls to an end. The good aspect about this model is that it divides the life of a product in several stages with different characteristics based on sales level and growth of the product:

introduction; growth; maturity; decline.

This allows the adoption of different strategies according to the consumer behaviour and considering the sales of the product.

The PLC model is not capable in predicting the duration of the phases since that depends on the product and industry (i.e. PLC of a smartphone is much smaller than the PLC of a shampoo). In addition, a sudden drop of sales does not really result in new product cycle since this change can be provoked by external events or factors like changes in market or consumer preferences or the introduction of substitutes by the competition can turn planning based on a product life cycle prediction totally useless. There is little or no guarantee that a product will even make it out of the introduction stage, or it may move through the cycle faster or slower than anticipated.

The PLC can also prove useful to predict on how the competition will react towards sales changes and then being able to define countermeasures.

How did Lifebuoy strategies in the early stages of its PLC enabled the brand to become a leader?

Since inception in late 19th century, Lifebuoy, was good citizen brand of India, reaching millions of customers from the rural areas

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