Product Management For Dummies

Chapter 16

Retirement: Replacing a Product or Taking It off the Market

IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding what product retirement is and why products need to be retired

Plotting elements of a product retirement plan, including special product situations

Taking some product retirement pointers

Retiring a product (often called end of life) occurs when a company decides to exit the market. Sometimes companies make this decision strategically after much thought. Other times, a product may have failed miserably or died out over time, and it becomes obvious that it’s time to stop selling it.

Retirement can involve completely pulling the product from the market without replacing it or, in many cases, replacing it with a new version. Products may be retired for a variety of reasons, such as technology changes that make the product obsolete, competitive pressure that make the product no longer viable, or the product simply can’t meet the required revenue or profitability thresholds.

Retirement is an area of the product life cycle that companies often ignore. Yet keeping products around that aren’t profitable can cost a company a lot of money. Retiring products and determining how best to maximize ...