PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE

Product Life Cycle Theory recognizes FOUR separate developmental stages in the life span of a product, with each stage characterized by its own distinct marketing opportunities, characteristics and restraints. In a product's introductory stage, growth is slow, with minimal profits, since consumers' purchases have merely been on a trial basis.

If the product is successful, it goes into a

growth stage,

where its growth rapidly expands by new market entries, improved distribution channels, and shrewd pricing strategies.

maturity stage follows, where sales and profits decline, where sales

stabilize.

Finally, the product goes into a and profits decrease.

The product life cycle theory states that a typical product's life cycle follows the form of an S-shaped curve, although some products may have a very rapid growth stage or an immediate decline. Also, some mature products can have their life cycle reversed. For example, when baking stage of its life cycle. When it was discovered that baking soda deodorized refrigerators, however, the product's sales soared and its new use put it back in the growth stage of its life cycle.

soda was launched, it was

used only for cooking and quickly reached the maturity

VALUE PROPOSITION

A value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered and a belief from the customer that value will be experienced.

A value proposition can apply to an entire organization, or parts thereof, or customer accounts, or products or services. Creating a value proposition is a part of business strategy.

Kaplan and Norton say "Strategy is based on a differentiated customer value proposition. Satisfying customers is the source of sustainable value creation." Developing a value proposition is based on a review and analysis of the benefits, costs and value that an organization can deliver to its customers, prospective customers, and other constituent groups within and outside the organization.

 It is also a positioning of value, where Value = Benefits - Cost (cost includes risk). @@@@@@@ U.S.P. [UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION]
The Unique Selling Proposition (a.k.a. Unique Selling Point, or USP) is a marketing concept that was first proposed as a theory to understand a pattern among successful advertising campaigns of the early 1940s. It states that such campaigns made unique propositions to the customer and that this convinced them to switch brands. The term was invented by Rosser Reeves of Ted Bates & Company. Today the term is used in other fields or just casually to refer to any aspect of an object that differentiates it from similar objects.

Definition In Reality in Advertising. Reeves laments that the U.S.P. is widely misunderstood and gives a precise definition in three parts: 1.Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Not just words, not just product puffery, not just show-window advertising. Each advertisement must say to each reader: "Buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit."

2.The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. It must be unique either a uniqueness of the brand or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field of advertising.

3.The proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass millions, i.e., pull over new customers to your product...

Examples

Some good current examples of products with a clear USP are:

Head & Shoulders: "You get rid of dandruff"

Some unique propositions that were pioneers when they were introduced:

Domino's Pizza: "You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less -- or it's free." FedEx: "When your package absolutely, positively has to get there overnight" M&M's: "Melts in your mouth, not in your hand"

Metropolitan Life: "Get Met, It Pays"

But their "uniqueness" is debatable (for example Head & Shoulders is hardly unique in its claim) and it's not entirely clear what a 'proposition' actually is. If it is simply an

assertion of a product benefit, by this standard, any assertion about a product could be called a USP.

People will argue that there is a difference between a USP and a brand slogan. In fact, the FedEx and M&M lines are catchy advt. slogans that were created for the purpose of making their USP memorable.

M&M's USP is chocolate wrapped in a hard sugar candy shell. The slogan is, "melts in your mouth, not your hands." FedEx's USP was the ability, unlike the Post Office, to guarantee overnight package delivery. The Fed Ex slogan is similar, but not the same as the USP The Domino line is an actual USP. The company has dropped the "or it's free" promise, but their current slogan is "You got 30 minutes."

The term USP has been largely replaced by the concept of a Positioning Statement. Positioning is determining what place a brand (tangible good or service) should occupy in the consumer's mind in comparison to its competition. A position

is often described as the meaningful difference between the brand and its competitors @@@@@@@@@@@

MARKET NICHE A niche market is the subset[division] of the market on which a specific product is focussing.

So the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact.

It is also a small market segment.

For example, sports channels like STAR Sports, ESPN, STAR Cricket, and Fox target a niche of sports lovers.

Every product can be defined by its market niche.

As of special note, the products aimed at a wide demographic audience, with the resulting low price, are said to belong to the mainstream niche in practice referred to only as mainstream or of high demand.

Narrower demographics lead to elevated prices due to the same principle. So to speak, the niche market is a highly specialized market aiming to survive among the competition from numerous super companies. Even established companies create products for different niches, for example, Hewlett-Packard has all-in-one machines for printing, scanning and faxing targeted for the home office niche while at the same time having separate machines with one of these functions for big businesses.

In practice, product vendors and trade businesses are commonly referred as mainstream providers or narrow demographics niche market providers(colloquially shortened to just niche market providers).

Small capital providers usually opt for a niche market with narrow demographics as a measure of increasing their financial gain margins. Nevertheless, the final product quality (low or high) is not dependent on the price elasticity of demand; it is associated more with the specific needs that the product is aimed at satisfying and, in some cases, aspects of brand recognition (e.g., prestige, practicability, money saving, expensiveness, planet environment conscience, power etc.).

Niche audience

Technology and many industrial changed with the post-network era.

practices

 There is a new drive for niche audiences because audiences are now in much greater control of what they watch.

It is very rare to have a substantial audience to watch a program at once, with the few exceptions of American Idol, Superbowl and the Olympics. Still, networks do target particular demographics. For example, Lifetime targets women and MTV targets youth. In this context of greater viewer control, networks and production companies are trying to discover ways to profit through new scheduling, new shows, and relying on syndication.

This practice of "narrowcasting" also allows advertisers to have a more direct audience for their messages.

 In the fashion industry a growing trend is to have shop-in-shop setups where big stores promote niche brands inside to draw in new demographics.

Online niche marketing

An often used technique for affiliate marketers is Internet-based niche segments of larger markets, referred to as niches. A website can be developed and promoted quickly to uniquely serve a targeted and customer base, giving the affiliate a small but potentially durable source of revenue.

This technique can then be repeated across several other niche websites. A bigger niche is harder to market to as the expense of online advertisements increases according to the popularity of the keywords used (on Adwords, for example).

 Some niches may become saturated with marketers, increasing competition and thus reduce the slice of the pie available to each competitor. One solution is to find smaller, "undiscovered," but still profitable, niches, usually by searching out the best keywords to target.

These lower cost keywords are called long-tailed keywords, as in the long tail of secondary keyword phrases that usually follow the main keyword in popularity of number of searches conducted by internet users.

Because some are so obscure [incomprehensible, unclear, vague, ambiguous, doubtful, unintelligible] as to have few or no clicks per month, the trick is to find the right ones to target.