What do you think is the most important stage in a product’s life cycle?
The product life cycle (2021)
Now that you have covered the basics of the product life cycle, complete the following exercise.
Instructions: Determining the most important stage in the cycle
- Reflect on what you think is the most important stage in this cycle.
- Write your answer in the discussion below, and explain why you think your chosen PLC stage is the most important.
- Try to find a real-world example that you can use in answering this. It might be an example from your professional experience or one you’ve found elsewhere.
- Reflect on at least one of comments from random learners below. Do you agree with their response? How do their experiences differ from yours?
Molly Campbell
What comes to mind as the most important stage for me is the decline stage. With the ever changing tech landscape, I feel that apps/websites etc have such a difficult task of staying relevant. Social media apps are what I thought of in this situation. Apps/sites such as Facebook or Instagram are now competing with SnapChat and TikTok, so both have updated their functions to include more video and filters, etc to be relevant in that market. They are trying extremely hard to prevent their decline and become obsolete. I do agree with others that development is very important as well, and the example I gave may have to go back to the development stage in a sense to redesign and update things to meet consumer demands.
Christina Bek Larsen
As it is a cycle, I find it very difficult to point to one stage as the most important one. One stage doesn’t exist without the previous one, I suppose. I think each stage requires something specific from the PM. With competition and evolving needs in mind, I am thinking about the growth stage as being a tricky stage. To keep relevant and ensure your rpoduct is growing seems like a challenge.
Ibukun Oni
I think the “Development stage” is the most important phase because if the right product is not developed to meet the needs of customers, then efforts during the other stages become futile.
I recall developing a digital product, the first assignment of the project team was to ensure that the product met the needs of our customers.
Chibuzo Anazodo
I think the Development stage is the most important because that is where you figure out what fits your consumers needs as well as trends in your industry to adapt or avoid to build a product that will thrive through all stages and still remain relevant after Maturity.
Peter Scheinsohn
I would say introduction, is most important step in the product life cycle. Even, if product was properly developed, but not good enough introduced and advertised or not clear enough introduced for which group it is, it will significantly influence its further growth. However, i also agree that proper development stage and growth stage are also very important, but good start (“introduction”) is vital in my humble opinion.
I believe the Maturity stage is the most important stage in the Product Life Cycle (PLC). During this stage, a product typically reaches its peak market penetration and profitability. However, maintaining success at this stage requires continuous effort to differentiate the product, retain customers, and prevent a decline. The maturity stage is where businesses must work hardest to innovate and adapt to changing consumer preferences, ensuring the product stays relevant.
For example, Coca-Cola has been in the maturity stage for decades. The company consistently innovates with new flavors, packaging, and marketing campaigns while maintaining its strong brand image. This constant adaptation has allowed Coca-Cola to remain a market leader despite intense competition and changing consumer preferences.
Molly highlights the Decline stage as the most important because of the challenge of staying relevant in a rapidly changing market. She references social media apps like Facebook and Instagram, which have adapted features to compete with TikTok and Snapchat. I agree with her point that decline often requires revisiting the development stage to redesign and update a product.
However, I see the maturity stage as more critical since businesses can proactively address market shifts during maturity to delay or avoid decline. For instance, Coca-Cola’s long-standing success shows how continuous adaptation in the maturity stage can prevent a product from reaching decline prematurely. Molly’s perspective reflects the challenges faced by tech products, which often experience shorter PLC stages, while mine focuses on industries with more prolonged maturity phases. Both perspectives highlight the importance of adaptability.
I think the development stage is the most important in a product life cycle because one of the main reason for developing a product is to satisfy the consumer needs and solve their immediate problems or the one that might seem to arise in the future. And I think if the product satisfy the consumer needs and solve their problems,the introduction and the growth stage will be seamless .
And the growth stage is another important stage of product development where a product manager has to be very careful and start developing additional features that can bring additional satisfaction to the consumer as there are more competition in this stage
I strongly think and believe development stage is the most vital stage in life cycje of any product. At this stage the purpose for production and the end users and put in consideration, if eventually the taste of the consumer changes, the PM will have to come back to this stage, reevaluate options on the table and reinvent new product to suite the consumer needs. Tesla produced EV cars in order to reduce the green house gases by using clean energy to run the cars. And since inception of this product, it has been working on improving the quality of the product, buy increasing the power of the cars, enabling it to cover more distance, increasing the safefty measures and comfortability of the vehicle.
When other stages begin to fail, the development stage is where the PM will always fall back to. It is the back bone of every successful, struggling or failing business.
Joy Kenneth.
Development stage ; This is the time where you do critical thinking. research, analyze and ask your self some question like with this product am about to launch am i solving any problem. who are my target consumers, is the price okay, if there are such product in the market already what will make mine to stand out. will the consumers accept my products.
when all the above questions are answered the product will stand tall in the market.
My example is Bigi cola, they came to the market to compete with coke cola but their test was not good enough thereby making coke cola to still stand till date.
As someone rightly pointed out, it is a cycle. One stage cannot exist without the preceding, and so every stage is as important as the next.
It is pertinent to note, though, that the development stage is the foundation of the product. Building and launching a product without asking the necessary questions revolving around issues to be solved, target audience, market size, pricing, perceived value, competitors and so on is definitely a recipe for disaster. Market research, data-driven analysis and customer- focused decisions are very important.
However, there is a reason that the introduction stage is referred to as the high-stakes period. This means it is literally a make-or-break phase, the riskiest stage where the product can either sink or soar. It is the time to establish value in the minds of the consumers. Marketing, promotions, influencing, advertising are crucial at this point. Yes, a good product is good, but testimonies, even mouth-to-mouth referrals go a long way to push a product deeper into the market.
Another very tricky stage is the maturity stage. From the growth stage, your market penetration is deep, but competitors now emerge to partake of a piece of the pie, and the market is saturated. Consumers have the luxury of choice and so sales slow down. It is in this time that the product owner has to use insights based on data that he has continuously collected throughout the PLC to innovate, tweak, support the product to keep it in its maturity stage for as long as possible.
Nobody wants to see their product go obsolete, but it happens to the best of us, and we all need to be prepared to be as factually creative and innovative as we can be for our products, consumers and stakeholders.
I think that the most important stage in a product life cycle is the introduction stage; my reason being that if the product is not properly introduced to the right customers and market, it will affect other stages of its cycle no matter novel the idea might be. Using gadgets for example, we have seen new phones, televisions, laptops, etc. introduced in the market with good qualities but they couldn’t beat the traditional ones people have known despite being more affordable.
Ad i continue to enjoy the learning with other participants, I have however contributed to this discussion or sent in my comment on the Growth stage, but while checked back on others comments, I read them and compared to my stage selected.
To me, all the stages are important for ensuring a product continues to stay relevant, but the stage that strikes me more is the development stage. If a product is not developed to meet the customer’s needs, they might start using the product but eventually get tired of it. The product manager needs to create innovative ideas to ensure that the needs of his/her target market are met during the development of a product.
To me the most important stage is the development stage , basically because it’s that stage that determine the birth of whatever would be introduced and before development start market survey would have been done,so as meet the targeted audience .
To me, the most important stage is the Development Stage, this is where you discover what your target consumer prefers most and discover what will likely make you most relevant and give you edge compared to your competitors.
Using the Havaianas for example, they used rubbers in the production of their flipflop and I can say it is what still makes them relevant, also not forgetting that they are conscious of the trends and are incorporating better plans. If they had used wood or straw just like the Japanese, they will have been out of market today.
The Development stage is very crucial because it is the foundation on which the others steps are laid.