Sales and Profit Forecasting

Financial forecasting in marketing Preparing a financial forecast is usually a key requirement in order to have a major marketing campaign, new product, or other marketing project approved. As in most cases, is there is a significant investment up front or during the early part of the campaign/project. Therefore, it becomes necessary to demonstrate that … Read more…

Make the PLC: A Free Excel Template

The product life cycle template for Excel – available for free download Often students want to graph multiple products onto the product life cycle using an Excel spreadsheet or some other charting approach. Perhaps surprisingly, this is sometimes awkward to produce easily, given the focus on the Excel spreadsheet to produce graphs rather than images. … Read more…

New Products and the PLC

As it is possible to use the product life cycle as a portfolio analysis tool, which allows us to consider whether we have adequately provided for the future profitability for the firm/brand, it is an obvious that there is a strong connection between the product life cycle and the firm’s new product development requirements. Obviously … Read more…

Marketing strategy approaches for each stage of the PLC

Marketing mix strategies during the introduction stage Offer a basic product with limited choices, as this also helps test the overall market demand/interest, while keeping costs and logistic challenges relatively low Use marketing communications (IMC/promotion) that are effective in generating initial awareness and reaching innovators. Often specialist websites/blogs and magazines provide a specific audience, as … Read more…

Should we cannibalize our own products?

One of the challenges of a mature market in the PLC is that, more than likely, eventually the firm will be faced with competition from new style of product. That is, the most significant competitors are going to introduce technology that is quite different in their design/features (while meeting the same underlying consumer need). For … Read more…

Consumer Adoption Categories

This website has discussed consumer innovators numerous times, due to their importance in generating product adoption and kick-starting the introduction phase of the product life cycle. While innovators are the initial type of consumer, there are other consumer mindsets that are typically discussed in marketing textbooks. The standard consumer adoption categories include: Innovators Early adopters … Read more…

Four brand strategies

When it comes to brand development, there are four main brand approaches, as shown in the following diagram. As you can see, this diagram is a matrix built around the two attributes of existing/new product category and existing/new brand name. This then determines one of the four boxes, namely: Product line extension Multi-brand Brand extension … Read more…

Main branding decisions

In modern-day marketing, brand equity is generally highly sought-after. Brand equity can deliver financial benefits to the firm – primarily through greater market share, price premium, and increased customer loyalty. There are multiple decisions to be made however, when introducing a new product into the marketplace. This particular article provides an overview of this process, … Read more…