Selling products on Amazon entails always staying attentive and researching the market, competition, and demand for the products alike. Products that do not receive proper optimization and are not adapting to the constant changes in the market are doomed to fade away with time. As such, understanding Amazon’s life cycle for a product is crucial to maximizing your profits and reducing the risks. By keeping tabs on the state of your product, the market, and the trends, you can optimize your sales and gauge the product life cycle on the platform.
Traditional 4 Stages of Amazon’s Product Life Cycle
Any product has four stages in its lifecycle. Understanding your product’s current stage will help you manage it more appropriately and make better decisions.
Introduction Stage
The first stage that every product goes through is the introduction phase. In the introduction stage, the product is new to the market, and you need to build awareness about its niche. As such, the introduction stage is most crucial for a new product. The risk is considerably higher at this stage, and so are the costs.
If the product doesn’t take off during this time, it will be harder to make it successful in the future. Thus, you should put a good effort into high visibility and awareness of your product..
Growth Stage
The growth stage is when the product becomes more popular and more people demand it. The sales start to increase, but so do the costs. In turn, the product is being duplicated and re-sold. Nonetheless, the risk is still low, and so is the competition, as you are in the driver’s seat. Still, that might not last for too long.
Thus, you need to focus on maintaining the growth and keeping your product visible. You should also start expanding your distribution channels and increasing your marketing budget. As potential buyers know about the product’s existence, their main concern would be its quality, the best price, and if their expectations will be satisfied.
Maturity Stage
The maturity stage is when the product has reached its peak demand, multiple sellers are selling it, and the market is saturated. The costs have also stabilized and are slowly showing signs of decline. Products that have reached maturity are medium risk. While sales may start decreasing after a while, there are product categories that may stay there for an indefinite period.
The maturity stage is where you need to focus on maintaining your market share and profits. You can reduce your prices, improve your distribution channels, focus on customer retention, or differentiate the product. You will also need to focus your marketing efforts on outselling your competition.
Decline Stage
The decline stage is when the product loses its popularity, and people no longer demand it. The sales start to decrease, and so do the profits. This may happen because the product is no longer relevant, there’s a new trend or technology, or the market is oversaturated.
In this stage, you need to focus on reducing costs, as the profits will continue to decrease. You can try discontinuing the product if it’s no longer profitable. You can also consider withdrawing the product from the market or repurposing it.
Fabs and Trends
Some products become popular for a short time and then lose their appeal. These are called fads. An example of a fad is the hoverboard. It was introduced in 2015 and became increasingly popular, especially with celebrities. However, by 2016, sales started to decline as people lost interest in the product.
Fads are generally low risk and have a short shelf-life. As such, you don’t need to focus too much on them. However, if you do decide to sell a fad product, you need to be aware that it will only be popular for a short time. You should also ensure that you have enough inventory to meet the demand.
Evergreen Products
Evergreen products have a continuous demand and usually don’t have a lot of competition. An example of an evergreen product is a book. A book will never go out of style, and people will always be looking to buy new titles. However, some books become more popular than others and go through the product life cycle stages. For example, a new Harry Potter book will have an introduction stage where it’s announced, and people are eager to get their hands on a copy. Then, it will go through the growth stage as more and more people start reading it and talking about it. Finally, it will reach maturity and decline as people move on to other things.
Handle Your Product Lifecycle on Amazon
After you understand Amazon’s product life cycle, you need to know how to handle it to maximize sales, reduce costs, and adequately manage your stock.
Manage Your Inventory Properly
You need to ensure enough inventory to meet the demand at each product’s life cycle stage. However, overstock may be risky at times of decline.
During the introduction stage, products make up an average of 27% of sales across all industries. Nonetheless, depending on the product itself, having too large an inventory may be risky. However, you need to ensure that you have enough stock to meet the growing demand in the growth stage.
Furthermore, you don’t want to have too much inventory at the maturity stage, as the market is somewhat saturated. Still, you need to have enough to supply the demand. Lastly, you want to reduce your inventory at the decline stage to avoid having too much-unsold stock.
Keeping track of your inventory, especially when you’re also selling on other e-stores along with Amazon, can be a daunting task. To minimize your bothers on this issue, you will need eSwap, which can help you manage your inventory at each stage of the product’s life cycle. With eSwap, you can easily track down your list and be notified when you’re running out of stock.
PRO TIP: Connect your Amazon seller account to eSwap. eSwap’s Amazon Inventory Management integration lets you control all your sales from a single platform. List your products from multiple channels in eSwap. With every new order, the total stock will decrease, always giving you the exact information on your inventory levels across all platforms.
On top of that, you can also ship deliveries from other shops like WooCommerce and Shopify through Amazon. All it takes is to just click on “Ship with Amazon MCF” (to verify) when there is an order, then fill in the necessary information.
Monitor Your Prices
Leaving your prices as they are for the whole time is never a good idea. You need to monitor and adjust your prices to be competitive constantly. This includes both decreasing and increasing those.
You may want to set a higher price during the introduction stage to recoup your investment costs. However, as the product moves into the growth stage and more competitors enter the market, you will need to lower your prices to stay competitive.
As the product reaches maturity, there will be more price competition, and you will need to adjust your prices. Finally, you may want to consider clearance pricing to eliminate your unsold inventory in the decline stage.
Direct Your Marketing Efforts
Marketing is crucial to selling any product anywhere. Hence, you have to be conscious and deliberate about your marketing efforts in selling your products on Amazon.
During the introduction stage, you will want to focus on creating awareness of your product. This can be done through paid advertisements and social media campaigns.
As the product moves into the growth stage, you will want to focus on driving traffic to your listing. This can be done through Amazon’s search engine optimization (SEO) features, such as Amazon Sponsored Products.
Finally, during the maturity and decline stages, you will want to focus on maintaining your sales volume. This can be done through effective pricing and promotions.
Wrapping Up
By understanding and managing the different stages of Amazon’s life cycle, you can increase your sales, reduce your costs, and adequately work your inventory. Use eSwap for real-time updates on your stock with a few clicks.
