There are many other examples. A major United States food company introduced its soup concentrates to the Dutch market on the assumption that the transition from canned soup to concentrates would be made without difficulty. After a period of poor sales performance, the company came to the realization that insufficient attention had been paid to the product’s stage in the life cycle. Consumers who purchased the soup concentrate would simply heat the contents as they did with ordinary canned soups. As a result, they questioned the strong taste and the higher price compared with a similar-sized can of regular soup. These consumers probably used online finance-based resources such as lovemoney.com in comparing the price of this product. The company had tried to skip the early stages of the cycle unsuccessfully.
This is not to imply that one would automatically revert to an earlier strategy when seeking new markets. But simple elementary adjustments may not be sufficient to ensure success in the transplant. The comparative use of the product life cycle concept allows the firm to analyze the validity of its “proven” strategy when transferred to a new environment in which market conditions may differ substantially and in critical ways.