Product Life Cycle, and Market Entry and Exit Decisions Under Uncertainty

Abstract

A key characteristic of the product life cycle (PLC) is the depletion of the product’s market potential due to technological obsolescence. Based on this concept, we develop a stochastic model for evaluating market entry and exit decisions during the PLC under uncertainty. The model explicates the conditions for the optimality of a two-threshold policy based on the estimated earnings potential of the product, and can be used by manufacturing firms to assess entry and exit decisions under such conditions. To aid the applications of the model in actual decision situations, we also provide the procedures for computing the exact and approximate values of the two thresholds.