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Planning: Late Maturity Stage

Characteristics:

• Competition: The competitive landscape has stabilized with only the survivors remaining often made up of a few market giants and several small niche firms.
• Target Market: The market has become saturated for first time buyers and focus is now on getting existing customers to remain loyal.
• Product: The introduction of new models is reduced to just a few product performance enhancements, though there may be more stylistic improvements.
• Prices: Overall prices stabilize and may rise due to limited competition.
• Promotion: Large competitors begin to cut back on expensive promotions designed to attract new customers and focus on reminder promotions to loyal customers.
• Distribution: Has stabilized with few new distributors agreeing to handle product. For products sold at retail stores there is a noticeable reduction in shelf space devoted to the product.
• Profits: Companies see profits recover as demand stabilizes, pricing rises and overall marketing costs drop.

Brand Strategy:

If companies have failed to extend the PLC in the early part of the maturity stage, it is very likely the product form may never again experience growth. Instead the companies will continue to market the product, albeit, with little effort other than making it available to customers who have been purchasing it for some time.

By the late part of the maturity stage the companies that are still selling may no longer consider the product an important product for the future of the company, but this does not mean the product is not important. In fact, it may be very important for the profit it generates (a.k.a. cash cow) which is used to fund new products. Consequently, some attention is still paid to the product but only to insure that it is still available to those who want to purchase.

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