What is a Product Life Cycle (PLC)?

Product life cycle goes through multiple phases, involves many professional disciplines, and requires many skills, tools and processes. 

PLC has to do with the life of a product in the market with respect to sales measures over a period of time.  

1. Market introduction stage
   • Costs are very high
   • Slow sales volumes
   • Little or no competition
   • Demand has to be created
   • Customers have to be prompted to buy the product
   • Makes no money at this stage
2. Growth stage
   • Costs reduced due to economies of scale
   • Sales volume increases significantly
   • Profitability begins to rise
   • Public awareness increases
   • Competition begins to increase
   • Increased competition leads to price decreases. 
3. Maturity stage
   • Costs are lowered as a result of production volume increasing
   • Sales volume peaks and market saturation is reached
   • Increase in competitors entering the market
   • Prices tend to drop due to proliferation of competing products
   • Brand differentiation and feature diversification is emphasized to maintain or increase market share. 
   • Industrial profits go down. 
4. Saturation and decline stage
   • Costs become counter-optimal
   • Sales volume decline
   • Prices, profitability diminish
   • Profit becomes more a challenge of production/distribution efficiency than increased sales.