A STUDY ON THE ROLE OF PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE MANAGEMENT IN COMPETITIVE MARKET POSITIONING WITH REFERENCE TO ICICI BANK

The series of tactics that management employs as a product progresses through its life cycle is known as product life cycle management. A product's selling circumstances are subject to change throughout time and need to be controlled as it progresses through its many phases. Every product is said to have a lifespan; it is introduced, develops, and eventually may die. It's reasonable to say that not all goods or services expire, at least not in the near future. Clothes are likely to survive, but jeans may not. Depending on the social and political environment, legal or medical services may or may not cease to exist. Despite its dubious veracity, it may provide managers with a helpful "model" to have in the back of their minds. In fact, their goods should probably be at the forefront of their minds if they are in the introduction, growth, or decline stages, since these phases may revolve around such life and death. It is beneficial for them to have that mortality image in front of them between these two extremes. The most crucial thing to remember about product life-cycles is that, even in the best of circumstances, they often don't exist; for this reason, model/reality mappings need to be given greater attention. Most of the main brands have been in business for at least 20 years in most areas. Thus, continuity characterises the main product life-cycle of the brand leaders that virtually control many markets. The PLC is not an independent variable to which businesses should modify their marketing strategies; rather, it is a dependent variable that is dictated by market behaviours. The length and form of a brand's life cycle may be changed by marketing management alone. Therefore, the life cycle should typically be firmly within the marketer's control and may be helpful as a description but not as a forecast. The key issue is that in many markets, the life cycle of a product or brand is far longer than the organisations' planning cycle. For the majority of marketers, it thus provides little usefulness. Even if they have access to the PLC (and the associated PLM support), their plans will only take into account the portion of the curve where they are now located (probably in the "mature" stage); their perspective of that portion of the curve will most likely be "linear" (and constrained) and will not cover the entire range from growth to decline.