Limitations
It is important for marketing managers to understand the limitations of the PLC model. It is difficult for marketing management to gauge accurately where a product is on its life cycle. A rise in sales per se is not necessarily evidence of growth, a fall in sales per se does not typify decline and some products, e.g. Coca Cola and Pepsi, may not experience a decline.
Differing products possess different PLC "shapes". A fad product develops as a steep sloped growth stage, a short maturity stage, and a steep sloped decline stage. A product such as Coca Cola and Pepsi experiences growth, but also a constant level of sales over a number of decades. A given product (or products collectively within an industry) may hold a unique PLC shape such that use of typical PLC models are only useful as a rough guide for marketing management.
For specific products, the duration of each PLC stage is unpredictable and it's difficult to detect when maturity or decline has begun.
Because of these limitations, strict adherence to PLC can lead a company to misleading objectives and strategy prescriptions.
Read more about this topic: Product Life-cycle Management (marketing)
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