Why is the Product Life Cycle such a useful tool to use in business?

The product life cycle is a business marketing tool in which it is able to assess the stages a product goes through in its life. The four stages are

1. Introduction - Where the product is introduced to the market, slow growth

2. Growth - Increase in growth in sales and increase in speed of growth

3. Maturity - Peak in sales at this point, but the increase in speed of growth is slowly declining

4. Decline - sales begin to fall, final stage of the PLC.

Therefore using the PLC can help to analyse when a product will have most sales so the operations team can prepare to match demand with supply so there are no shortages in times of high demand and no huge amounts excess inventory, as excess inventory can be  very costly to a business.

Another reason as to why it is a useful tool is the stage in which the product will start to make a profit and for how long can be roughly estimated before hand.

Therefore these are just two reasons to show the usefullness of the PLC to a business but there are many  many more, along with having its limitations.