The Brand Life Cycle: 4 Stages for Building a Strong Brand

Brand Life Cycle Introduction

Understanding the brand life cycle is crucial for any business to establish and maintain a successful brand. Like living organisms, brands also go through distinct growth, maturity, and decline stages. Each stage represents different challenges and opportunities that businesses must navigate to effectively manage their brands in the market.

In This Article

Recognizing where a brand stands in its life cycle is essential for making informed decisions about marketing strategies, product development, and resource allocation.

The concept of the brand life cycle is closely associated with aspects of the product life cycle in marketing, brand identity, brand image, and other intangible factors, such as features of customer consumption, feelings that a brand should evoke for its customers, etc.

Product Life Cycle

There are four different product life cycle stages:

Introduction
Growth
Maturity
Decline

Introduction Stage

The first stage is the introduction stage of the product life cycle. This is when a new product is launched into the market, requiring significant research, development, and marketing investment. During this stage, companies focus on creating awareness and generating initial sales.

Growth Stage

The second stage is known as the growth stage of the product life cycle. In this phase, sales increase rapidly as more customers become aware of and adopt the product. Companies often invest heavily in marketing during this stage to further accelerate growth and capture a larger market share.

Maturity Stage

The third stage is called the maturity stage of the product life cycle. Sales begin to stabilize, as most potential customers have already adopted or are aware of the product. Competition intensifies during this phase as other companies enter the market with similar offerings. To maintain market share, businesses may differentiate their products or expand into new markets.

Decline Stage

Finally, we have the decline stage of the product life cycle. This occurs when sales decline due to changing customer preferences or technological advancements that render the product obsolete. Companies may choose to discontinue or revamp their products during this phase.

Understanding these stages allows businesses to develop appropriate strategies for each product’s life cycle phase. By doing so, they can effectively manage resources, optimize marketing efforts, and make informed decisions about pricing, distribution channels, and innovation initiatives throughout each stage of their products’ journey to achieve long-term success.

The stages of PLC may be assumed to be the basis for the stages of brand life. However, the concept of brand life cannot be analyzed separately from the stages of PLC.

Brand Life

Brand life evaluates the relationship between time and consumer value, while the product life cycle evaluates the relationship between sales volumes and time.

The brand life is based on the product, customer behavior, and opinion analysis.

Similar to the product life cycle, the three stages of the brand life cycle are the introductory period, during which the brand is developed and introduced to the market; the growth period, when the brand faces competition from similar products; and, finally, the maturity period, in which the brand either extends to other products or its image is constantly updated.

Without careful brand management, the maturity period can lead to a decline and result in the brand’s withdrawal.

Brand Life Cycle Model

All brands evolve through four stages. Most start as product brands (they make things like watches, airplanes, and Coke), and then some are transformed into service brands (they provide help and repair or get you a Coke).

Over years of brand-building effort and market presence, they gradually become either a Category Brand, which is defined as having a leading market share within a category, or a Personality Brand, which establishes a strong brand personality that consumers identify with; or an Experience Brand, which goes beyond traditional service and product excellence with a strong sense of uniqueness.

Another type of brand is an Ingredient Brand, which is a co-brand. Ingredient Brands usually provide additional trust or confidence and often signify using an exclusive or proprietary technology. Examples include Windows, Intel, Oracle, etc. If we buy an IBM computer, we will find two other co-brands: Windows and Intel.

After being extremely successful, these brands moved up one level and became Corporate or Global Brands, expanding geographically to become dominant global leaders.

Sometimes, a brand needs to move from one category to a brand of multiple categories. This is particularly common in fast-moving consumer goods. These categories are not mutually exclusive.

A brand can be both a global brand and a personality brand (Virgin) or a global brand and an ingredient brand (Intel). The Brand Life Cycle model suggests that the ultimate goal for all businesses is to have a global brand.

Product Life Cycle Case Study: Pulse Candy

Pulse Candy was introduced in 2013 by the DS Group, a leading Indian FMCG company that manufactures brands such as Rajnigandha (Pan Masala), Baba (Tobacco), and Catch (spices).

Pass Pass ‘Pulse‘ is a Kaccha Aam-flavored hard-boiled candy with a tangy twist, priced at Rs 1 per unit. The candy was launched with a unique proposition of a hard-boiled candy with a tangy, amchur-flavored core. Pulse Candy was targeted at young adults and teenagers who were looking for candy that was both sweet and sour.

Its competitors were Parle, Perfetti Van Melle, Mondelez India, and ITC, which have candy brands such as Kaccha Mango Bite, Alpenliebe, Cadbury Chocolairs, and Candyman, respectively.