Common Expressions to Describe The Life of a Product

Welcome to Wisdom Wednesday.

Let’s continue our exploration of collocations in Business English to make you sound more natural in business English. Today, I want to examine the typical life of a product and see what collocations we can use.

Product Development & Launch

1. Conduct market research: This refers to gathering information about potential customers and their needs to inform product development. (e.g., "The company conducted extensive market research to identify a gap in the market.")

2. Develop a prototype: This is a preliminary version of the product used for testing and refinement. (e.g., "The design team is currently developing a prototype for the new smartphone.")

3. Launch a product: This signifies introducing the finished product to the market. (e.g., "The company is planning to launch a new fitness tracker next quarter.")

Growth & Marketing

4. Generate leads: This describes identifying potential customers interested in the product. (e.g., "The marketing campaign is successfully generating leads for the sales team.")

5. Position the product: This collocation refers to creating a specific image and target audience for the product in the market. (e.g., "The marketing campaign is designed to position the new tablet as the perfect choice for students.")

6. Increase sales: This signifies growing the number of products sold. (e.g., "The new marketing campaign has helped to increase sales by 20% this quarter.")

Maturity & Decline

7. Reach market maturity: This refers to the stage when the product sales growth starts to slow down. (e.g., "The smartphone market has reached maturity, and companies are now focusing on innovation.")

8. Face competition: As the market matures, competition intensifies. This collocation highlights the challenges of competing with similar products. (e.g., "The company is facing increased competition from new entrants in the market.")

9. Phase out a product: Eventually, a product may need to be discontinued. This collocation refers to the process of gradually withdrawing a product from the market. (e.g., "Due to declining sales, the company is planning to phase out the older model of the laptop.")

10. Develop a new product line: Companies need to innovate constantly. This collocation emphasises the importance of developing new products to replace ageing ones. (e.g., "The company is investing heavily in research and development to develop a new product line.")

Are you involved in any of these steps in the lifecycle of a new product? If so, which collocations can you use?

Word on the Day - Launch

• Launch - verb (begin): to introduce something new.

  • "We are going to launch the new product in November in time for Christmas."

• Launch - verb (send): to send something out.

  • "NASA plans to launch the new satellite next month."

• Launch - noun (event): an event to introduce something new.

  • "The product launch went very well last week."

• Launch - noun (occasion): when a ship or rocket is sent out.

  • "The launch of the new ship was witnessed by thousands."

Do you have any Business English questions?

Please email me and I will do my best to answer them in future newsletters.

Until Friday - have a great day!

Iain.

www.communicateenglish.com

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