Life Cycle Concepts

Life Cycle Concepts

Product Life Cycle

A product has 4 stages  in its Life cycle:

1. Introduction
2. Growth
3. Maturity
4. Decline

Introduction: A period of slow sales growth as product is just introduced in the market, profits are very less due to the cost incurred for production and advertisement. Vaseline came into India around 1960s and it was the only product that was selling petroleum jelly. For the first few years the company struggled to get any tractions in the market but once then the customers came to know what petroleum jelly was, the product took of in India.

Growth Phase: This is the period of rapid market wide acceptance and increase in the profits through sales substantially. Over the years Vaseline Petroleum jelly has reported profits and has grown substantially.

As we can see from the above figures, the Profit after tax has gone up for some years now. In the growth phase Vaseline increased its customer base, added new customer, introduced new packing and made users loyal to the brand.

Maturity: At this stage the brand looks forward to maintain its customers and tries to revamp its product to get in new customers. We can see from a chart above EBIT sales have decreased over the years whereas the PAT has increased this the company is earning as it used to but the profits are coming in some other ways.


Decline Stage: Vaseline has still not entered this stage.

Industry Life Cycle

 

 

The industry life cycle is a concept which is related to the overall view of the complete industry of one particular category in general terms we can say ILC is a combination of various PLC belonging to that particular sector of market.

 

Introduction: Vaseline was the first brand to come up with the petroleum jelly, but its certain for a fact that HUL was first one to enter the Prsonal Skin care market market in 1932, followed by Lakme Cosmetics in 1952.

 

Growth: The personal skin care market is currently is worth Rs.170 billion. With few new entrants in the space Vaseline continues to do good job of maintaining its top position.

 

 Maturity and Decline: The industry is yet to see any maturity and decline.