Product Life Cycle: What to Do at Each Stage
The product life cycle describes how a product’s sales and profitability change over time. Its four market stages are introduction, growth, maturity, and decline, as defined in OpenStax’s marketing textbook. Each stage brings a different priority: establish demand, expand sales, sustain an established product, or manage falling demand.
The four stages of the product life cycle
The standard model links each stage to typical sales, profits, and marketing priorities.
| Stage | Typical sales pattern | Typical profit pattern | Main priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction | Low initial sales | Low or negative | Encourage trial and establish distribution |
| Growth | Rapidly increasing sales | Rising profits | Attract buyers and build brand preference |
| Maturity | Growth slows; sales level off | Competitive pressure on profits | Defend the product and find new users |
| Decline | Falling sales | Falling profits | Reduce spending or withdraw the product |
On the standard diagram, time runs along the horizontal axis and sales along the vertical axis; OpenStax also plots profit separately. Sales growth and profit growth are therefore separate measures.
Introduction: build awareness and make the product available
Introduction starts when a product enters the market. Sales are initially limited, while promotion and launch costs can leave profits low or negative, according to OpenStax’s introduction-stage description.
The priorities are to explain the product’s benefits, encourage first purchases, and establish places to buy it. OpenStax’s launch strategies distinguish two pricing approaches:
- Skimming: charge a high initial price, targeting buyers willing to pay more.
- Penetration: charge a low initial price to encourage adoption and build volume.
The same source distinguishes rapid and slow versions: rapid approaches use more promotion; slow approaches use less. Launching a product does not require choosing the lowest price.
Growth: expand distribution and strengthen preference
Growth means the product is gaining market acceptance. OpenStax describes rising sales and the arrival of competing products as characteristic of this stage.
The practical priorities in OpenStax’s growth-stage guidance are to:
- Improve quality or add useful features.
- Reach more buyers through additional distribution channels.
- Shift promotion toward reasons to prefer the brand over alternatives.
Broader distribution adds expense as well as reach.
Maturity: defend sales and extend the product’s appeal
In maturity, sales growth slows. An established product can remain in this stage for years or decades, and profitability can persist where there is a competitive advantage, according to OpenStax’s maturity-stage account.
Extension strategies seek additional demand for an established product. The Principles of Marketing chapter on LibreTexts identifies three approaches:
- Change the market: reach new customer groups, geographic markets, or uses.
- Change the product: improve quality, features, packaging, size, or style.
- Change the marketing mix: revise promotion, pricing, or distribution.
Its warning about price wars also matters: cutting prices to defend sales can damage profitability. Extension is a strategy to pursue, rather than an assured return to growth.
Decline: choose whether to maintain, harvest, or withdraw
Decline involves falling sales and profitability. OpenStax identifies changing tastes, technological change, competing products, and rising costs among the causes.
The LibreTexts discussion of decline presents three choices:
- Maintain: continue selling the product; the remaining market may become more attractive as competitors leave.
- Harvest: reduce investment and marketing costs to capture remaining returns.
- Divest or discontinue: sell the brand or remove the product, with a plan for remaining inventory.
These choices require attention to the remaining business. Decline does not automatically mean immediate withdrawal, and keeping the product does not guarantee a profit.
How to identify the stage
Start with the sales trend, but check whether a change is sustained. AQA’s teaching guide cautions that a fall can be temporary and that stage lengths vary.
For a practical review:
- Specify the product or category, the market, and the period being assessed.
- Compare sales across comparable periods and review profit separately.
- Examine competition, product availability, and changes in customer demand alongside the curve.
The market definition matters: LibreTexts notes that a product can be mature in one country and newly introduced in another. Avoid assigning one worldwide stage solely from its age.
OpenStax warns that withdrawing marketing support after a temporary sales decline can itself hasten the decline of an otherwise healthy product.
A real product life cycle example: Apple’s iPod
Apple’s records document the iPod product family’s launch, expansion, revisions, and eventual withdrawal:
- Introduction: the original iPod was introduced on October 23, 2001, as recorded in Apple’s product retrospective.
- Expansion: on April 9, 2007, Apple announced the sale of the 100 millionth iPod. The announcement also reported more than ten models introduced since the first sales in November 2001.
- Product revisions: Apple’s retrospective lists later models, including a seventh-generation iPod touch introduced in May 2019.
- Withdrawal: on May 10, 2022, Apple announced that iPod touch would remain available while supplies lasted. It also described how the portable music experience had become integrated into its other products.
These milestones do not establish an exact maturity date. That would require the sales history, rather than launch and withdrawal dates alone. They show that product revisions and eventual retirement can coexist within a long product-family history.
Frequently asked questions
Does the product life cycle have four stages or five?
The market model uses introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. A five-stage version adds development before launch: AQA includes development as the period of turning an idea into a product, with spending on development and testing before sales begin.
How long does each stage last?
There is no fixed duration. AQA explains that stage lengths vary, while OpenStax notes that products need not pass through every stage. Some launches move directly into decline without establishing growth.
How is the product life cycle different from product development and PLM?
Product development concerns creating and testing the product before launch. The market life cycle concerns its subsequent sales pattern. Product lifecycle management, or PLM, has a broader operational scope: IBM defines it as managing products from concept and design through production, service, and disposal. PLM coordinates people, product data, processes, and systems across that span.