Week 6 - Product Obsolescence

Product life cycles can vary depending on the product.  Some products have a very long product life cycle.  The wheel is a pretty good example, even most things that fly need wheels.  But other products can have very short life cycles.  I like to think of championship t-shirts for professional sports teams.  Once a team wins a championship their fans buy memorabilia, most often t-shirts, to celebrate the moment.  It’s an emotional purchase.  The life cycle for these items can be a matter of weeks.  But nothing hastens the life cycle of a product like obsolescence.  When a product becomes obsolete it’s because the customer need it was serving is now being served more efficiently by another product or service.  More efficiently can be quicker, cheaper, simpler, you name it.

A great example of this is the typewriter.  If I were getting my MBA 30 years ago I might be writing this paper/blog post on a typewriter.  Originally, the typewriter was a vastly more efficient form of word processing than writing something by hand.  With a typewriter users could write something quickly and without have to worry about the legibility of hand writing.  In the 1990’s the typewriter became obsolete with the mass appeal of personal computers.  Personal computers gave users the same keyboard functionality as a typewriter, but now they could edit their document on a computer screen and print when ready.  Not to mention their document became a digital document that could be transferred via email.  The personal computer became an easier and more efficient tool for word processing and effectively ended the product life cycle of the typewriter.

 

Various forms of Media like music and movies are another good example of product obsolescence.  When I first became interested in music I was listening to it on cassettes.  I have no fond memories of using cassettes and CD’s quickly made cassettes obsolete.   CD’s gave consumers a better listening experience with improved sound quality and ease of changing songs.  No more did you have to fast forward or rewind to get to the song you wanted!  The same transition happened as movies transitioned between VHS to DVD to Blu-ray.  But now the tangible product of a CD or DVD is being replaced by digital distribution.  Consumers are starting to prefer to own their media in the digital space via ITunes, Netflix, or Amazon.