Final answer:
Harry's Office Furniture needs to find ways to maintain their market share as file cabinets near the end of their product life cycle. Strategies include cutting manufacturing costs, reducing the product price, and innovating to enhance the product's features and functionality.
Step-by-step explanation:
All products go through a product life cycle, and in the case of Harry's Office Furniture, their file cabinets are nearing the end of this cycle. With the increase in digital storage diminishing the demand for traditional file cabinets, the company must innovate to stay competitive. To maintain its market share, Harry's Office Furniture needs to consider several strategies:
- Cutting manufacturing costs can lead to economies of scale, which means as production volume increases, the cost per unit decreases. This strategy often entails investing in more efficient production technologies or larger-scale operations, akin to those of warehouse stores like Costco or Walmart.
- Reducing the cost of the product to the consumer may be achieved through various ways, including finding more cost-effective materials or manufacturing processes, which may help maintain or increase the demand for file cabinets despite the trend towards digital storage.
- Extending or refining the want-satisfying capabilities of its products could involve redesigning the file cabinets to have additional features or to serve multiple functions, possibly integrating technology to appeal to modern office needs.
Rather than increasing the price of the product, which could further diminish sales in a declining market, these alternative approaches aim to sustain the firm's relevance and customer base. By implementing such strategies, Harry's Office Furniture can potentially prolong the product life cycle of their cabinets or pivot to new product offerings better suited to current market demands.