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Hey there, fellow marketers, Professor Wolters here. And today we're going to talk about the industry life cycle. Sometimes when we talk about it, we talk about the product life cycle. And what we're looking for are the different stages in an industry. From when it starts in this introduction, to when it starts to grow, and its maturity phase, to when it eventually declines. So we're going to go through each one of these steps to talk about, hey, what kind of strategies should we use? Where are we manufacturing, what's going on here? So we can have the most success as a business at each one of those levels. Okay, so if we look at each of the stages. I like to talk about the introduction phase, when it comes out. Then the growth phase when things start going right. The maturity phase, when things kind of plateau. And then the decline phase and things kind of die off. The thing is, though, in some models, we'll actually talk about product development. So there's no products being sold, we're just spending money developing it. I'm not going to talk about that, in this video. I'm just going to focus on the when the products are actually being sold, okay. So the first stage we have is called the introduction stage. Okay, this is when the products first come out, it's introduced into the name, right. And the thing is, here is when you're in an introduction phase, you're coming out with something completely new. Something completely different that people haven't seen before. So the strategy you're going to use in this situation, is a differentiation strategy. Hey, we're different, we're special, you should buy us over what was here before, right? And so if you think about it, if you think back when I remember when when HDTV came out, and they would show like, oh, here's the HD TV screen versus your old school TV, you're like, Wow, that is way better. But the thing is, at first, this HDTVs didn't take off. Why? Well, there was no movies in HD, there was no TV in HD. What was the point of spending, like an extra $1,000 for a TV, if it didn't do anything for you? And then you started having like the tonight show and sports started to be in HD. And then people could see "Oh, this is why you should buy it." But that introduction phase, you have low sales numbers. You're not making much money. I mean, you've had all this development costs out there, now you're not selling very much stuff. So therefore the prices tend to be the highest in that introduction phase. And you're gonna have a lot of costs in terms of distribution and promotion. I mean, think about it, your ads are just educating people. What is an HDTV? You're not saying, buy a Sony HDTV or buy a Samsung HDTV. You're just like, "Hey, dude, dudettes. "Do you know what an HDTV is? Let me explain what high definition television is." And so so much advertising spent just educating the market in this introduction phase, that you really spend a lot just to just let people know what's going on. And the people that tend to buy this time are innovators, or affluent buyers, because they have the money to pay those higher prices. And I kind of look at it this way. I mean, if you think back, think back to the very first time you saw an iPhone. You're- like the first time you saw one, you're like, "Oh, wow, it's an iPhone. "That is so cool, like, let me see, can I see it?" Like it's something so new you've never seen before. Like, what does it do? How do I unlock it? It takes pictures and plays music? [kapow] Blew your mind, right? And that's what you have in this introduction phase. It's something so new, and it's exciting for people. But over time, more and more people started to buy the iPhone. I mean, I know now everyone thinks "Oh, everyone's had iPhones forever." Well, no, the iPhone one. I mean, it's sold well, but it didn't sell as well, some of the later models. When people really were into buying those new iPhones. And so when you start having that growth, now you start taking off, now you hit the growth phase. And the thing is, in this growth phase, we are still doing our differentiation strategy, or you might call it product innovation. We're coming up with new little things about it, right? Something makes our thing a little bit nicer than the others. "Oh, ours has a remote control. Ours has a special timer that goes off whenever you want, oh, our phone does this. There's still some innovation there. But you're starting to have some more competition. Because of the growth phase, you've proved that this product or this industry is successful. And now the competition starts coming in. Now you're fighting more. So it's not just me educating my clients about what is HDTV. It's why you should buy a Sony HDTV. And the thing is with that competition, that competition helps drive down prices, right. So there's, there's more competition out there. We got to have deals, we're trying to entice you to buy the Sony over the Samsung. And we start to have market standardization. You start having where everything starting to like, be more similar. I mean, think about it. After the iPhone one became really, really popular and it kind of become a standard. All of a sudden, all the other phones. I mean, let's be honest, you're- if you look at your mobile phone right now, it looks basically the same as all the other phones, right? It's become standardized. It's a rectangle with a screen you touch, we're done. I mean, that's what they all are now. But that's what happens in the growth phase. You get that standardization. This is what we're all going to be doing. And the thing is in this growth phase, more people are buying but it's not like a guarantee people are actually buying. So this is kind of like when the iPhone two or three are out. And then people are like, "Hey, do you have an iPhone? Oh, you do, can I get your number?" Right you like you have to ask them to see if they actually have to do FaceTime or something like that. It wasn't a guarantee. And that leads us into the maturity phase. So the maturity phase, we start to hit this plateau. And in terms of sales, it's not growing like it was before. Because people aren't buying their first phone. It's not growth in new things, it's just people replacing their old phone, right? And so you wait a year, two or three to replace that phone. I mean, how long do your parents wait to get a new phone? How long do you wait to get to new-a new phone? You're not doing it all the time. And so therefore sales kind of plateau here. And with that, you start to see is there's a lot of suppliers out there. There's all this stuff that can happen to make it cheaper for those phone companies to lower their costs. And so that's where this process innovation comes in. You start to see more overcapacity. You see people trying to find and scratch and claw to maintain their market share. 'Cause you're like, Look, I wanted to maintain my 30%. So your strategies kind of change a bit. And you end up having sometimes what we call incremental innovations, just little things. I mean, that's what you're looking at now, with, with mobile phones. They're at the maturity phase. People are just replacing their phones that they had before. And it's a little bit better. The processor a little bit better, the phone is a little bit better, the touch controls is a little bit better, the phone, the games are a little bit better, right? It's just these little changes you have. And that's what you try to do to kind of spark new sales in this maturity phase. And there's gonna be other things you might look at. You might have what's called a market modifying strategy. And this is where you try to go out for a new market, or you develop a new niche for your product. So maybe you're like, Huh, what if we come- if we're McDonald's. "Maybe we come up with organic burgers, yeah, they make veggie, they make organic." This can be something else we do to re-enliven sales, right, like try to re pop things up again. But again, it's gonna be a little bit but you know, it's a little something you try to do. And so when we're modifying these things, it can be as something as simple. I mean, how many different variations of Coca Cola do we have now? I mean, Coca Cola, lime, lemon, orange, orange, vanilla, vanilla cherry, I mean, it just goes on and on forever. Because they're doing these little tweaks, right. And sometimes it's not just the, the flavor kind of changes. Sometimes the packaging might change. So you might have one gallon of coke, or you might have those little tiny coke cans. Yeah, they do that to try to figure out some way to get every little market they can. And then you have what's called the decline phase. And the decline phase usually starts when another product or another industry comes in kind of a usurps that industry. So if you look at in terms of VHS players. You know, they went off, they took off, it plateaued, and then the DVDs came and that died off. And then DVDs were going really well. And then streaming services came and they died off. And so you start to see is like look, there's sometimes things that happen, that come in really kill off a market. And the thing is, in the decline phase, you're sticking with process innovation, whoever can make it cheaper. You're seeing companies exit, like, "Look, we don't need to make DVDs players anymore. "No one's just watching DVDs, we don't have to have that. "We're gonna focus on streaming stuff, or we're just gonna make blu ray players and stuff like that." And so with the firms then are doing is, they might harvest or sell off parts of their company that made products that are in the decline phase. And the thing is, is just because it's the decline phase doesn't mean you get rid of the product completely. What some companies do is they see it's a decline phase. But we'll have a little niche market, we'll just have this little niche. You know, the LP player, I mean, think about it. Albums made a comeback like 30 years after they thought we all thought they died, right? Like, wow, that was a whole new thing that came in that decline phase. How are we found that new little niche out there for music lovers, right. But in general, what you're seeing is in the decline phase, lowest price wins. It becomes a commodity industry, and it kind of goes through that. And the thing is, you'll see this a lot of industries. And it's really easy to see in technology, because you see the technologies come through so much quicker. But I just thought this would be a good thing to talk about and give you an idea of what to look for when you're looking at the industry life cycle or product life cycles. So I wish you the best and have a great day. Bye.