a case study about the effect of the promotional activity on the PLC

1. Linking promotional activity to the
product life cycle
 Products for consumers at affordable
prices:
BIC was founded by Marcel Bich in 1950 with a goal to make
quality built pens at an affordable price.
In 1975 they introduced their first one-piece shaver and they
immediately became the market leader in that sector .
In 1990s BIC decided to improve and expand its product
range to meet customers’ needs and to compete with the
new competitors they started to make a two blade shaver
and they called it BIC 2 to differentiate it from the first razor
They had made .
In the beginning of the new millennium BIC launched its first
ground breaking three blade razor for men “BIC Comfort 3”
and one year later they released “BIC Soleil Lady” for
women.

2.  The Boston Matrix and BIC products:
--The Boston Group developed The Boston Matrix to identify
the classes of products in an organization’s portfolio.
- Problem Children:
The responsibilities that come with newly-launched
products.
- Star:
The beginning of the successful products in the growth
stage.
- Cash Cows:
The products at its pinnacle without any sort of evolving
thus they need marketing support to keep going.
- Dogs:
In this stage the products’ growth is declining slowly
because they are generating a negative cash flow.

3. --The Boston Matrix can be applied to BIC products :
 The Cristal Ball pen and Classic shaver are popular and
well-established products with very high sales unit and BIC
produces them in humongous amounts.
 The Cristal Grip and Cristal Gel Pens and Twin Lady
shavers are stars with well-established growth patterns.
 Problem Children that have recently entered their respective
markets include Cristal Colors and Cristal Pocket Scents in
the pen markets and Comfort 3 and Soleil in the shavers’
market.
 Of course , some products fail to take off sufficiently and / or
go into decline . The “Tough Beard” shaver has not
warranted further development and BIC has taken it out of
production.

4.  Developing the product range:
- In 1951 BIC’s Cristal Ball pen was launched and took over
30% of the market share.
- In 1964 BIC launched BIC Orange which was recognized
by its orange barrel.
- In 1990s as the Cristal and the Orange became more
mature and BIC got interested in developing the Cristal
range to attract new users and invested in differentiate
them selves from competitors.
This led to the launch of a range of new products :
- Cristal Grip , for more comfort
- Cristal Colors , for fashionable colors
- Cristal Pocket , for a more convenient size
- Cristal Rockets Scents , for fun and fruity inks
- Cristal Gel , for smoother writing.
By continually adding to the range , BIC manages to inject
new life into the product life cycle of the overall range.

5. The range’s development has also helped to support the
enhancement of the core brand , and each year sales of
Cristal pens increase.
 The product life cycle and promotional
activity:
BIC analyses its products and promotes and supports these
in line with their stage in the product life cycle. For example :
although BIC Cristal and the Classic shaver have been
developed through the years , the style and the design of the
products haven’t changed a lot .
In their initially release the promotional activity focused on
gaining awareness but now it’s focusing on keeping and
rewarding loyal customers who still but these products.
When BIC launched the Comfort 3 they invested heavily in
outdoor media such as billboards and conducted national
press advertising to raise awareness.
With Cristal Gel , BIC supplied existing Cristal Bell Pen users
with Cristal Gel samples to give it awareness.
During a product’s growth stage BIC uses market research
data to understand the market developments and consumer
needs and they continue to support the product to convert
normal customers to regular ones . At this stage advertising
is important to attract new customers.
As a product moves towards maturity , BIC’s marketing
experts need to identify ways of injecting new life into it .
They must also identify new product developments that can
meet similar consumer needs . This explains why , for
example , BIC has developed extensions to the Cristal
range.

6. Once a product has saturated a market , sales will stagnate .
However , it is important to continue to support cash cows
because they play a vital role in injecting profits that sustain
new product development.
Once a product has moved into decline , a company like BIC
will look to replace it with new products that meet existing
and evolving consumer needs . For example , the razor
Tough Beard was taken out of product portfolio because
other new BIC razors were better able to meet the needs of
customers with “Tough Beards”!
 Conclusion:
BIC is an innovative company that uses technical and
marketing expertise to supply consumers with the products
they want and need and because they understand the
Boston Box and product life cycles they are always able to
target appropriate activities to support the various products
in their portfolio.