Know your product's lifecycle

All products regardless of whether they're sold online or offline have life cycles. The traditional product life cycle is usually shown as:



In a nutshell, everything starts at the Introduction stage, where marketers pour resources to introduce a product, gain brand recognition, among others. It is expected that sales volume will increase until it reaches the Growth stage where sales volume steadily increases and costs are reduced due to economies of scale. The public is also aware of the product, and there is increased competition with other entrants in the market.

At the Maturity stage, the intended target market is pretty much saturated, and sales volume is at peak. Price may further drop, too, due to competing products, while marketers pour over to emphasize brand differentiation and develop different unique selling propositions to stand out among the rest. A product will eventually reach its Decline stage, where as the name suggest, sales volume drop and profitability diminishes.

That is the traditional life cycle. There are alternate product life cycles too, as illustrated:



We've discussed the traditional PLC, so next comes the Fads, which were five-seconds-of-fame products but quickly disappeared from the social scene as people became bored of them. Fidget spinners were hyped, but quickly faded out.

There are also seasonal products, which come and go depending on the trend and in the clothing industry, season. I mean, who would buy a winter coat in the middle of summer? Starbucks is also known to sell seasonal products, and their sales are known to increase as Christmas approaches when they start introducing their holiday drinks once fall starts.

Classics are those which have been in the market for as long as we know, and which will always bring consistent sales volume (cars, for example), while revival/nostalgic products are those which have been long dead or at least pulled out from the market, but a manufacturer or business decided to take an interest in it and well, reintroduced as some "nostalgia feels" kind of thing. Vinyls and cassettes used to be obsolete until musicians started releasing new singles and albums in those formats.