What are some strategies to extend the life of a product?

After you’ve created a product your company will sell on the open market, that product has a natural life cycle. The cycle begins with the product’s introduction into the market, continues with the product’s growth as it captures the attention of your target audience, its maturity – which refers to peak sales of the product – and eventually, its decline. Your goal as an entrepreneur is to extend that period of maturity for as long as possible, but you must understand the most effective strategies to achieve that goal.

Adding New Features

Products tend to grow stale after years of being in the market, and that’s because customers have adjusted to the features and characteristics that once made the product unique or special. As a result, the decline of a product is often tied to familiarity and the need for customers to feel as if something old has become new again. That’s why adding new features to your product can be an effective extension strategy.

For example, if you're selling an electric bicycle that only allows for two speeds, you could add several new speed options to renew excitement in your target audience.

Changing Product Packaging

Research has found that clever product packaging can help your target audience feel more loyal to your brand. In fact, one study found that 33 percent of buyer decision-making is based on product packaging. Another study found that 40 percent of buyers would share pictures of an attractive product package on social media.

Repackaging your product can help it seem new and improved to your target audience, and it can also appeal to prospects that haven’t yet become buyers. Packaging includes the colors you choose, the design elements, the size of the package, the words and images you display on the package and the type of font you use.

Identifying New Markets

One of the benefits of globalization is that it has opened up the international market to small businesses in a way that wasn’t possible decades ago. Your company now has access to customers throughout the world, and that’s especially true if you are an e-commerce business that does all its selling on the internet. If you’ve done your market research properly, you will quickly realize your target audience isn’t limited to the U.S., but in fact, buyer behavior is similar across borders. You still have to market to the right audience, but the size of that audience and your access to that audience is now greatly expanded.

Planned obsolescence, to set the end of the useful life of a product established by its manufacturer, is a clear representation of the linear economy. A model based on producing, use and throwaway instead of reusing and recycling, is depleting the planet's limited resources, which also has a growing population: from 1950 to today we've nearly tripled the number of inhabitants of the Earth and it is estimated that in 2100 we will surpass the eleven billion.

This unsustainable model is leading to environmental, economic and social problems. As a possible solution the evolution from a linear economy to a circular economy model is proposed, in which responsible forms of collaborative consumption and to lengthen the life cycle of products to avoid throwaway are chosen.

How to extend the useful life of products?

The current consumption model is to discard and immediately replace the damaged product, often without assessing the possibility of extending the product life. Here are some tips to extend the useful life of the products:

- Fix, repair and recover: the first rule to extend the shelf life of the products is to try to fix it yourself if it is a simple and not dangerous operation, or with the help of a professional. For example, if our mobile phone screen is damaged, try to fix it instead of buying a new one.

- Share, exchange, barter: if there is a product that we use occasionally and another person needs the same product or service, is it possible to reach an agreement to share it? For example, if we know that will use the bike only on weekends, we can share it with someone who needs to go to work from monday to friday. Also when traveling sharing the car with more people is more responsible to the environment and our economy.

- Rent and lend: there are products that might be lent or rented when we are not using them, like a second home or a means of locomotion. For example, an aparment that we do not use more than one or two months a year can serve as temporary housing for people who are interested in visiting the area.

- Sale of second-hand: if we are not goint to use anymore but is in good condition, we can extend its life by selling it to a new user. Similarly happens when purchasing a new product, we must ask ourselves if it is absolutely necessary that is new. For example, when we want to furnish our house we can use to buy a second-hand furniture and thus increase the useful life of the product and avoid the production of a new one.

- Re-use and, as a last resort, recycling: when there is no possibility of extending the life of a product, try to look for a different use and function. For example, a broken suitcase can still be reused as a cradle for our pet or an original nursery for flowers and plants.

Source: La Vanguardia.

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