Marketing

1. The product life cycle is essential when a firm is a managing a product. While a product is in the introductory phase of its life cycle the customer is going through a learning process. Firms must consider this learning process when determining how much to spend on marketing strategies, the firm must understand that it will spend a lot of money to make the customer aware of their product and they wont see a lot of sales. During the growth phase of the life cycle the firm will see fast growth which will lead to profits or they will break even. The firm will also see declining expenditures so to properly manage their product they should concentrate more on building and holding customers rather than focusing on innovators and early adopters. At the beginning of the maturity phase sale will increase but slower because the market becomes saturated so the firm must work harder to maintain customers to keep profits from declining rapidly. Firms should focus on customer loyalty and try to increase usage by each user. When a product begins to decline a firm could either move the product to a new market in a different country or they could leave the product in the same market but not spend money on marketing the product and focus more on other products they could market.

2. Attending a sporting event is a service, by attending you are being provided with entertainment which is a form of a service.

a. A sporting event is intangible you are receiving the entertainment which cannot be physically touched or compared to another product easily, you must compare the product by comparing to it another experience you had or someone else told you about. A sporting event is inseparable, we can see this by looking at the three aspects of inseparability. First the service providers involvement clearly the service provider is present in that the players are physically playing in front of you. Second the customers are directly involved in the service experience, just take the Detroit vs. Indiana basketball game where players and fans were involved in a fist fight in Detroit. Although this may have been a bad experience for the fans it shows just how involved fans are with sporting event. Third other customers are involved with your experience, like the drunk at the game who is cheering for the other team. This fan is directly involved in how you view your experience at the game. Heterogeneity is very easily demonstrated