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 would say the introduction stage is the most crucial stage. At this stage, a product should target how to hit the market in a strong way. Any product that successfully scale through this phase will most likely excel however, not without continuous innovation, improvement and feedback loop. I would cite Opay payment app as an example, after the challenge they faced with their logistics business in Lagos state, they focused on building a payment solution and came strong into the market. They have since then keep improving on their product based on customers requirements.
I would say each stages are very important in PLC. They all need each other to surpass every stage for effective growth. But what I will consider very crucial is the maturity stage.
I want to use our very favorable 2go of back in the days for instance, it was developed and had met the needs at that time what WhatsApp has met in today’s world, I bet the developers never thought of what will become the life circle of that product, or perhaps they did very little about growing the product into the a level of maturity.
Maybe it was bad marketing strategies, or some poor production and sustainability decisions.
In the end they couldn’t meet up the high demand from its consumers after it launch stage which then led to its extinction.
I personally would have thought it to be wise to sell of the product to better developers that had what it takes to sustain the product, it’s services and also meet demands of it consumers while developing it through all it PLC stages.
I think the most important stage in a product’s life cycle is the introduction stage. This is the stage where there’s room for trials, errors and corrections. Which is why a company should be sure about a product’s viability in the market before launching it into the market.
Even though the PLC goes through several stages, I believe the maturity stage to be the most crucial since it has already experienced the growth stage, which includes going public and receiving feedback. This will assist in determining how to better realign the product during the mature period and keep it from going into decline.
For instance, at the maturity stage of an e-learning platform, the company only handles the result management process. However, it is clear that customers want more capabilities, so the company adds products like attendance tracking and school fee payment tracking, among others, which help to move the product back to the growth stage.
I believe the Introduction stage to be the most important stage because if a good strategy is not put in place to ensure that a product is well accepted to the public the product will not make it to growth or maturity stage not to talk of decline stage. A good product manager should coordinate all the team member to ensure that the product is properly introduce to the market with the help of campaign, if possible a trial or tested product can be made available to prospective customers in order boost their chance of survival in the market.
I would say each stages are very important in PLC. They all need each other to surpass every stage for effective growth. But what I will consider very crucial is the maturity stage.
I want to use our very favorable 2go for instance, it was developed and had met the needs that that WhatsApp has met in today’s world, I bet the developers has not thought of what will become the life circle of that product, or perhaps they did very little about growing the product into the a level of maturity. Maybe it was marketing strategies where not to meet up the high demand from its consumers which then led to its extinction.
Great
The most important stage of a product is development stage because a solid foundation for a product determines how long it would last
The most important stage is the development stage.
This stage will determine how well other stages will last… It will determine how soon a product would get to decline so fast.
The important stage that came to my mind is Growth and maturity, it means the product has been accepted. Sales stabilize and competition intensifies.
In as much as all stages are important, the development stage is the most important stage. This is the stage where thorough research has to be done in order to determine possible product success or failure and what consumers need/prefer on the market.
I remember working with a brand on a new product that they wanted to launch. There wasn’t enough research on the market and this product reached its decline stage before profits were made.
Hmm! that’s quite sad. The growth stage is very important and needs to be gotten right else, one might build a product no one needs. In addition, it is important to note that research should not stop just at the development stage. product managers must keep their feedback loop open and active else, a product like the above might reach its decline stage faster.
One can develop a product launch it and it didn’t quite match the market expectation, the next thing is to gather feedbacks and see if the product can be improved upon and keep improving on the product till it reaches customers satisfaction and saturates the market.