Active learning ideas
The Product Life Cycle (PLC) is a critical tool for understanding how products evolve from their initial launch to their eventual removal from the market. In the Ontario Marketing curriculum, students examine the four main stages: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. They analyze how sales volume and profit margins shift over time and, more importantly, how marketing strategies must pivot to keep a product relevant.
Activity 01
Small groups are assigned a long-standing Canadian brand, such as Canadian Tire or Hudson's Bay. They research the brand's history and plot key product launches on a giant PLC timeline on the classroom wall, identifying when extension strategies were used.
What are the stages of the product life cycle?
Activity 02
Students debate whether companies have an ethical obligation to extend the life of a product or if 'planned decline' is a legitimate business strategy. This connects marketing goals with environmental stewardship and consumer rights.
How do marketing efforts change as a product matures?
Activity 03
Each group chooses a product currently in the 'maturity' stage and creates a visual pitch for an extension strategy, such as a new flavor, packaging change, or target market. Students walk around the room and use sticky notes to 'invest' virtual capital in the most viable ideas.
What strategies can extend a product's life?
A few notes on teaching this unit
Watch Out for These Misconceptions
All products eventually die.
Students often think decline is inevitable. By examining 'staple' products or brands that have successfully reinvented themselves over decades, students learn that effective marketing can keep a product in the maturity stage almost indefinitely.
The growth stage is the most profitable.
While sales are highest in growth, the maturity stage is often where the most profit is made because research and development costs have been recovered. Peer discussion about 'cash cows' helps clarify the difference between high sales and high profit.
Methods used in this brief
The Marketing Mix (The 4 Ps)
Students investigate product, price, place, and promotion, and how they interact to form a cohesive marketing strategy.
8 methodologies
Consumer Behaviour and Motivation
Students explore the psychological and social factors that influence why consumers buy certain goods and services.
8 methodologies