Games consoles and the Product Life Cycle

Christmas is coming and it's time for the new generation of games consoles to be released. It's also a good time for students to refresh their coverage of the product life cycle concept.

The gloves are off and the great games console battle moves on to the next round (the 8th by some counts - I covered consoles briefly in their 7th generation, back in 2008). I've taken the console graphs above from The Economist.

The product life cycle is a fantastically helpful concept, making sense of a firm's marketing mix as a product ages. In the consoles market there's a regular need to update and refresh products, prices, promotion and place. This applies in many different markets, from consoles to cars.

I've also come across a good resource on the BBC covering products that have recently come to the end of their lives: Tie Rack, Tesco Value and the Sony Walkman.

If you want to refresh your understanding of the concept there's a presentation and revision quiz that you might want to check out.