This game provides a classroom setting for the strategic planning of the marketing mix over the life of a product's exis ence in the marketplace. The students are required to track a product through four phases of its product life cycle--INTRODUC TION, GROWTH, MATURITY, and DECLINE. For each period the student makes four decisions concerning price, and expenditures for pro motion, distribution, and product quality. The elasticities of these four decision variables change in each time period, as they might during a "typical" life cycle. The "best" decisions for each period can be approximated by adherence to life cycle theory concerning the dynamics of the marketing mix variables.
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References
1.
Stanley Arbeit. "Computer Assisted Instruction in Marketing Growing Rapidly," Marketing New (November 16, 1979).
2.
Philip Kotler, Marketing Management (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967), pp. 281-3.
3.
For studies of nondurable goods like cigarettes and cosmetics see Nariman K.Dhalls and Sonia Yusph, "Forget the Product Life Cycle Concept!" Harvard Business Review. January-February, 1976, pp. 102-111
4.
, or a study of 228 ethical adrug products by William E. Cox, Jr. "Product Life Cycles as Marketing Models,"Journal of Business: 40 (October, 1967), pp. 375-84.
5.
David J. Luck and O.C. Ferrell, Marketing Strategy and Plans (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967), Chapters 11-14, pp. 259-366.
6.
Ben M.Enis, Marketing Principles3rd Edition, (Santa Monica, CA: Goodyear Publishing, 1980) pp. 343-52.
7.
Robert F. Swinner, et al, Marketing: An Environmental Perspective, ( St. Paul, MN: West Publishing, 1977 ) pp. 118-22.
