Prioritization of expanded marketing mix in different stages of the product life cycle: The case of food industry

In today’s competitive world, employing marketing concepts and methods while prioritizing the marketing mix approach for products can play an important role in increasing sales and ensuring greater success in the marketplace. The main objective of this study is to prioritize the marketing mix in each stage of the product lifecycle using the ANP approach. For this purpose, a questionnaire was designed, and a survey of food industry marketing managers in Mashhad was conducted in 2015. The results show that between 7P’s of marketing mix, in the introductory stage of the product life cycle, “promotion,” and in other stages “price” have the highest priority. According to the fact that each marketing mix has some sub-indices, the results show that among all sub-indices, “advertising” in the introductory stage, “high price” in the growth stage, “kind of payment” in the maturity stage, and in the decline stage, “rebate” possess the highest weights. Therefore, prioritization of the marketing mix can be used at different stages of the product lifecycle to help managers for better allocation of their resources and increase profitability.