What extension strategies can be used for a product in the decline phase of the product life cycle?

The product life cycle is an important concept in marketing. It describes the stages a product goes through from when it was first thought of until it finally is removed from the market. Not all products reach this final stage. Some continue to grow and others rise and fall.

The main stages of the product life cycle are:

• Introduction – researching, developing and then launching the product
• Growth – when sales are increasing at their fastest rate
• Maturity – sales are near their highest, but the rate of growth is slowing down, e.g. new competitors in market or saturation
• Decline – final stage of the cycle, when sales begin to fall

This can be illustrated by looking at the sales during the time period of the product. A branded good can enjoy continuous growth, such as Microsoft, because the product is being constantly improved and advertised, and maintains a strong brand loyalty.

Extension strategies extend the life of the product before it goes into decline. Again businesses use marketing techniques to improve sales. Examples of the techniques are:

• Advertising – try to gain a new audience or remind the current audience
• Price reduction – more attractive to customers
• Adding value – add new features to the current product, e.g. video messaging on mobile phones
• Explore new markets – try selling abroad
• New packaging – brightening up old packaging, or subtle changes such as putting crisps in foil packets or Seventies music compilations

There are brands that live like trees. They are born to grow, go into force just to get old and die like all living things do. That’s a story about Kodak, for instance. Kodak was on the top of film-based photography until one little invention of digital photography made all its achievements insignificant. Kodak was still very good at making film — the problem was that the world moved forward with digital technology, and Kodak left on the sidelines of history with its outdated product.

But there are also brands that live like phoenixes. They reinvent themselves and become stronger year after year. Take Levi’s. The company has been around since 1873, and it’s still one of the world’s favorite jeans brands. Or IBM, a pioneering tech brand that is alive and kicking even though it has recently celebrated its centenary. Another example is the Harry Potter saga. Fifteen years since the first book of the saga was published, the Harry Potter brand, valued at over $15 billion, is still going strong.

There are some things we can learn from Harry Potter brand strategy in terms of declining products recovery. But first, let's remind ourselves what the product life cycle is.

What are the product life cycle stages again? 

The product life cycle is a series of stages that products undergo from introduction to growth to maturity phase and eventual demise. The lifespan is different for each product. It can take a week or a month for one item, like some trendy necklace, and years or even decades for another. Warburtons, for example, has been existing since 1876.

There are four main product life cycle stages.

The introduction stage of the cycle is the launching stage. The product has just been introduced to the market, the growth in sales isn't significant as it takes time for people to test it. The competitors are not so fierce yet. It gives the company many chances to set a monopoly.

When defining the growth stage it is marked by higher profits and wider recognition. Customers spot you among other manufacturers and the demand rises. Entrepreneurs introduce some adjustments or additional features.

The longest of the stages the company pass-through is maturity stage. The sales rise to the highest point in their life cycle and the pace of progress slows down. The competition is extremely aggressive. The need to keep up with the competitors motivates entrepreneurs to update product characteristics and roll out advancements.

Declining stage of the product life cycle is the last in our list. The competition gets too high,  the sales go down because of the latest technological inventions, changes in consumer needs, and the upcoming trends. The sales rate falls until it stops being cost-effective for us to run the project. Nevertheless, there is still money to be made if you can handle it correctly.

As we can see in the table below, the basic strategy for managing the product in a decline stage is to maintain it at minimum cost and eliminate the advertising and sales promotions. Sounds not quite a path to success, right? 

Let’s check out some more promising product life cycle decline stage strategies.

Characteristics of decline stage, introduction, growth and maturity stages

A significant fall in income marks the beginning of the decline stage of PLC.  Making a profit during this period is challenging, but it's not all lost yet. Proper analysis of the market and your target audience prompts picking an appropriate variant among product revival strategies.

Here are several scenarios to prolong the life of your product:

Prolonging the product's life

The idea here is to promote the brand and maintain community activity through regular updates and releases that happen before any of the products could fall into the product decline stage. Harry Potter has perfectly mastered this strategy with its eight best-selling books, eight blockbuster films, eleven video games and a huge range of merchandise.

On the graph below you can see  how the popularity of the brand changed in the time span between the years 1997 and 2003. In the moment when one book was in growth or early maturity, the next book was launched to boost the popularity of the previous part and extend the overall product lifecycle.

The strategy prolonging product life cycle requires ongoing work. If you miss an opportunity once, allowing your product to reach decline, it can be too late to boost it. 

From our experience, startups often can’t handle a prolonging strategy just because they lack free hands in their product teams. For such cases, Eleken UI/UX agency offersteam extencion services.

Changing the direction during the decline phase of product life cycle

At the time consumers stop buying your product you can consider changing the direction. It means exploring possibilities and observe an alternative appliance for your solution.

Some businesses can modify their product and present it to other market segments. Such actions bring a new audience to your business. For example, those who couldn’t afford using your service previously, or those who simply didn’t notice you among the wide range of other offers. This way, you can start selling in a completely different industry and find a new niche.

Others, who notice their core product becomes outdated, try to break into a new market. Among product life cycle decline stage examples, we can recall the story of one of Eleken’s clients, TextMagic.  

TextMagic was one of the leaders in SMS marketing. The overall SMS usage, however, is doomed to decline due to a high prevalence of messaging apps like WhatsApp and Viber. In the picture below you can track this trend. The interest in SMS (blue graph) is continuously declining, while the popularity of WhatsApp is steadily increasing.

Seeking to avoid their product to decline together with the SMS market, TextMagic asked Eleken designers to add some new marketing functionality to their product. For instance, we were involved in designing live chat and email marketing features. 

With the new capabilities, TextMagic aimed to become an all-in-one marketing platform, gain new audiences and relaunch product’s lifecycle.

Redesign your solution during the product life cycle decline stage

It happens with products on the decline stage that overcomplicated design becomes a risk factor that may drag a company into collapse. That was a problem with Ricochet360, a cloud phone system and CRM platform that came to Eleken for redesign. 

Ricochet360 was a compex software. It took over a month for the product’s team to help clients set up the app, customize it and train an admin to use it. And then the admin had to guide other contact center staff on how to use new software in their work.

But customers don’t usually have months to figure out how to use a new app. So Eleken designers started working on Ricochet360 design, aiming to shorten its brutal learning curve.

As a result, the app became much more intuitive and usable.

If you feel like your app needs a refresh to unleash its full potential, check out Eleken’s redesign services. 

Start building a new value proposition in the time of decline stage in product life cycle

If all your efforts are in vain and the product becomes completely unprofitable the right choice is to discontinue it from the market. On this condition, you have got can sell the product to someone who sees some value in it or just close it down.

With the resources accumulated during the product’s maturity and decline, you’d be able to enter the market with new value propositions, thereby launching a new product life cycle.

Creating an MVP requires experienced product designers to accure maximum value with minimal cost. Eleken can help you design the smallest thing that you can build and that someone would pay for, or even just use.

What do you do at the decline stage of a product?

Choosing the right decline strategy opens new opportunities for your future projects and ideas.

The decline is a challenging period still it allows finding an alternative way of usage for the product or present a completely new thing on the market. Note, the last stage does not stand for the demise of your business in general. It is only the termination of one particle in a large structure. 

To make each project you launch successful and prevent the downturn, you have to be aware of effective product lifecycle management. And, of course, you need to recruit best product design talent. Good thing that Eleken design agency has already taken care of that. 

We're the most qualified SaaS designers you can get. Tell us a few words about your project and we'll come back to you with hand-picked UI/UX ideas.

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