Competition and product management: Can the product life cycle help?

Product Life Cycle (PLC) has implications for strategic product management. To overemphasize the marketing effort without paying attention to competitive changes during the PLC can be costly. The instability of demand and the instability of supply can be understood within terms of 2 theories: 1. the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Business horizons 1986-07, Vol.29 (4), p.51-62
Main Authors: Onkvisit, Sak, Shaw, John J.
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Product Life Cycle (PLC) has implications for strategic product management. To overemphasize the marketing effort without paying attention to competitive changes during the PLC can be costly. The instability of demand and the instability of supply can be understood within terms of 2 theories: 1. the diffusion of innovations theory, and 2. the theory of monopolistic competition. The concept PLC satisfies a number of evaluative criteria, such as well-formedness, linguistic exactness, stability, empirical interpretability, and falsifiability. The ambiguity of PLC as a theory comes in that it does not specify the conditions under which it is applicable. The degree of accuracy of prediction has also been questioned. However, the PLC theory offers implications implementation of competitive strategies. Five strategies and their competitive implications are outlined: 1. imitation, 2. defensive, 3. expansion, 4. transition, and 5. a technology tracking strategy for the future.
ISSN:0007-6813
1873-6068
DOI:10.1016/0007-6813(86)90024-8