Describe the pace at which the product will move through the product life cycle. What are some factors that will impact its movements?

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b. describe the pace at which the product will move through the product life cycle and any factors that will impact its movements. How will the product life cycle impact the marketing of the selected product/service:

A product goes through a cycle of growth, maturity, sales and finally "death". A product or service may have a series of short life cycles. This may occur where the product or service is used for a short time only and the target market itself is constantly changing. For example, baby foods manufacturers gain and lose consumers all the time. This means that there are always opportunities with new consumers and "established" buyers move out of the market. In this case, there cannot be one life cycle but a whole series. Other areas that are time-dependent include toys. Barbie in this case the brand/product has longevity; it has been a best-selling toy for generations of girls.

Factors that will impacts the product life cycle movement includes the disposal income of the family (parent's, whether they have disposal income to buy this product for their children); or whether there's another new product that is pretty much identical to Barbie but perhaps with even better quality and even cheaper price; for Barbie this case, factor like the growing up of the girls will impact on the product life as well, because as the girls grew up they may not want to play with Barbie anymore.

The marketing strategy will be affected by the product cycle life. If the product is still in its early stage, the marketing strategy may be fierce and aggressive (so more people will know of the products), but in later stage the marketing strategy might changed, say less aggressive and perhaps in a different way or through different medium.

Describe the pace at which the product will move through the product life cycle.

Firstly, for Barbie, its lifecycle is rather long, and in slow pace. First stage is development stage, that I would say it was being developed in a rather "normal" pace. During Barbie's growth stage its rapid and obtained a rather large market share in a short period of time, until reaching the mature stage, the growth rate started to slow down and remains rather constant.

Why constant? Reason is that, as mentioned before there are always opportunities with new consumers for this product (Barbie). For example, your grandmother might have owned a Barbie doll before, although she might not want Barbie anymore when grew older, the Barbie doll thingy then passed to your mother (perhaps your grandmother purchased the doll for your mother, or simply your mother wanted to buy one herself)...after your mother, will be your mother's daughter, then daughter's daughters...and ...