Product life cycle
A model describing the successive stages of a product or service: introduction (launch), growth (adoption), maturity (saturation), and decline (substitution). Each stage calls for a different marketing and operational strategy.
In practice
Identifying which life-cycle phase a core product is in is essential for calibrating investment. In the growth phase, heavy acquisition spending is rational — the market is expanding faster than competitors can capture it. In maturity, differentiation and retention win over acquisition. In decline, attempting to revive a structurally obsolete product costs more than pivoting to a new concept. Fujifilm read its own life cycle ahead of the digital shift; Kodak did not.