Product Life Cycle and Time Varying Advertising Elasticity in Port Harcourt, Rivers State

The research study examines product life cycle and time-varying advertising elastics in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. The population of the study consisted of 10 Television dealers, 10 Food and Beverages Distributors, 5 Tobacco Distributors, 10 Detergent Distributors, 10 Foam Mattress and Bedding Dealers and Suppliers registered with the Rivers State Chamber of Commerce. The sample size of the study consisted of 40 firms and a total of 120 respondents made up of owners, senior managers, sales representative and marketing executives in the frame of three (3) respondents from each firm were surveyed through the administration of questionnaire. The instrument for data collection contains 4 questions for the independent variable and 20 questions for dependent variables. Product life cycle was measured with time varying advertising elasticities, total scales of a product brand; advertising by rival firms, cumulative effect of past advertisement of product brand and advertising elasticity affected by other factors affecting demand for a product brand. The Cronbach Alpha was calculated to confirm the reliability of the study construct. The reliability coefficient obtained was 0.82 and the data generated were analyzed using mean and standard deviation scores. The researcher used Person Product Moment Correlation to test the stated hypotheses. Findings reveals that product life cycle is significantly associated with time varying advertising elasticities of product brand. The study conclude that to fully adopt product life cycle and the varying advertising elasticities dimension as key strategies for business cycle growth and continued survival. The researcher thus recommended that marketing and sales managers should utilize the huge benefit to advertising elasticity to campaign effectively in generating new sales in line with the product life cycle of a product life/brand, reduce product cost to prevent potential competitors, ensure the product should be reformulated and remodeled to suit the consumers’ preferences.