Product life cycle management is the succession of strategies used by management and as a product goes through its product life cycle. This can be divided into four stages: market introduction stage, growth stage, maturity stage, and saturation and decline stage. During the market introduction stage, the product is unlikely to make much money and demand has to be created, but little competition is experienced. In the growth stage, awareness and sales for the product increase dramatically, profitability rises, but so does competition. In the maturity stage, sales volumes peak, and prices are reduced, both due to economies of scale and increased competition. In the final stage, profit becomes more a challenge of production/distribution efficiency than increased sales.