Every product in the market has a life cycle. The life cycle is a pattern of sales and profits over time for any product. Therefore, product managers must ensure that they keep revising the product’s marketing mix to gain a competitive advantage in the market (Gitman et al., 2018). These four life cycles of a product are introduction, growth, maturity, and decline (Armstrong et al., 2020).
One such product that has gone through all these four cycles is a cassette tape. The cassette tape was the first technology that allowed people to share and record music. It was developed by the Philips Company in 1962 in Belgium and then first introduced to the European market. But its first purpose was transcription before people realized that they could record music.
The cassette tape’s first growth phase began when they were introduced in the United States in 1964. At this period, people began to install tape players in their cars to improve sound quality. Additionally, during the growth phase, Philips then offered a machine to help in recording and playing music. The machine was Philips Typ EL 3300. In November 1964, the United States received an updated machine player (Blurr, 2017).
During the 1966’s and early 70s, the cassette tapes grew exceptionally. Essentially, they outsold other tape machines. Also, within this period, the company’s different manufacturers had sold more than 2.4 million music players (Blurr, 2017). The cassette hit its maturity phase during the 1970s and 1980s due to its effectiveness, convenience, and portability way of listening to music. One thing that led to cassette tape’s popularity was its user-friendliness. During the maturity phase, cassette overtook some companies such as Lps in terms of sales.
Between 1985 and 1992, cassette tapes had become the most popular formats in the UK, where most music labels would experiment with different designs. They were essential for social changes during the cassette’s maturity phase and became popular in developing nations. Despite their popularity, cassettes tapes came to a decline phase. The introduction of CD players with electronic skip protection made it possible to use CDs in place of cassette players (Blurr, 2017).
During 1993, the CD player had more sales in terms of annual shipments, whereas the cassette tape’s annual shipments were declining. It was during the 200 that the CD player replaced the cassette tapes. Most companies such as Sony also stopped the production of cassette tapes due to the increased demand for CD players.
Goods are tangible, whereas services are intangible in nature. Services are perishable as they become essential the moment someone needs them. Also, services can only be utilized as no one owns them. The service life cycle has the same four stages as those of products (Brainkart, n.d). One such service that goes through the four phases is the hotel industry.
Most new hotel services experience low sales at the introduction stage as the service is new to people. Hence, there are few profits as only a few people attend the hotel. The growth stage is when individuals start to accept the hotel services. As such, they introduce others to the hotel, and at this stage, the hotel builds its image to attract more customers. Additionally, the hotel starts to gain more profit.
During the maturity stage, the services have become accepted by more people. Profits go up at this stage until they reach a saturation point. There is also a lot of competition as other hotels try to give better services. As a result, the market becomes more stagnant, and profits stabilize. Due to the stabilization of profits, the hotel services are coming to a decline stage, where sales and profits go down. The hotel management must, at this stage, decide to repackage its services or close down the hotel.
References
Armstrong, G., Adam, S., Denize, S., & Kotler, P. (2020). Principles of marketing (8th ed.). Pearson Australia.
Blurr, S. (2017). The convenience of the cassette. Southtree. https://southtree.com/blogs/artifact/the-convenience-of-the-cassette
Brainkart. (n.d.). Service life cycle. BrainKart. https://www.brainkart.com/article/Service-Life-Cycle_6012/
Gitman, L. J., McDaniel, C., Shah, A., &Koffel, L. (2018). Introduction to business. OpenStax.
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