Pricing over the Product Life Cycle

Abstract

To keep an established brand healthy and growing over the long term, the successful marketer must continually improve the product and develop marketing plans to capitalize on these changes. In any business it is necessary to study the ever-changing consumer and to try to identify new trends in tastes, needs, environment, and living habits.

Experience has taught us it is not enough to invent a new product. The real payoff is to manage that brand with such loving care that it continues to thrive year after year in a changing marketplace. We don’t believe in the ‘life cycle’ of products because if a brand dies, we have failed to do our job.

The Tide product we are selling today is vastly different from the Tide product we introduced in 1947. It is different in its cleaning performance, sudsing characteristics, aesthetics, physical properties, and packaging. In total, there have been 55 significant modifications in this one brand during the first 30 years.

(Edward G. Harness, Chairman of the Board, Procter & Gamble, in a speech to the annual marketing meeting, Conference Board, New York, 1977)