There are three core foundational life cycles for a brand to go through and brands must know which cycle they are in to adjust its marketing mix depending on its current phase in the life cycle and those phases are:

Introductory / Infancy Stage: When a brand is new and unknown and must focus on visibility and building the brand’s identity by defining its core values, mission. This is accomplished via marketing with heavy investment upfront and sales are generally slower (Touhami, 2023).

An example of this brand is Chime Financial

Product: Must differentiate itself from competitors and does this by building awareness that it is a mobile-first banking with fee-free features, early direct deposit of funds, and its own overdraft protection called “SpotMe”. This brands core focus is to market itself to underserved banking customers who are cost-conscious.

Price: Leverages its no fees on monthly balance or hidden charges. This is to achieve trust with its users and builds on a perceived value and allowed Chime to decrease the financial friction that legacy banks can cause to these users, thus solving a pain point.

Place: Digital access for mobile use as primary interface and partnered with FDIC insured banks to begin to offer additional services to allow it to scale quickly with minimal overhead of brick-and-mortar branches. This appeals to a newer generation of tech savvy users and deepen their target audience.

Promotion: Use of marketing campaigns that highlight its core message of early direct deposit and SpotMe overdraft protection, quickly allowed them to rapidly increase their user base; therefore, their daily cash flows quickly increased. Additionally, Chime started using social media and collaborations with influencers and public relations to enforce its trust, reliability to strengthen and amplify its mission. To keep its customers Chime provides digital financial education content on its app, thus further increasing its credibility (Khalid, 2025).

An example of this brand is Kia Automotive

Growth Stage: As market share increases and the brand becomes more visible with its expanding customer base their revenue will increase and the next step includes scaling the brand without compromising its quality, all the while, it must continue to compete with competition for marketplace and sales. This is generally done with innovation to try and set themselves apart by product differentiation / diversification (Touhami, 2023).

Product: Expansion of its product portfolio to include a full line of vehicles to include cars, crossovers, SUV’s, minivans in both internal combustion (ICE), hybrid, and full electric models. They continue to focus on design-led differentiation, electrification, and safety. Kia promotes its vehicles with user based feedback to now include special edition and even concept vehicles as it attempts to enter the premium market segment. Its goal is continuation of its leadership and emphasize its brand quality, 10 year warranty, and ride experience to further build trust and loyalty among its customers (Team, n.d.).

Price: As its brand and loyalty strengthens, KIA enjoys value-based competitive pricing as their value strengthens and can even charge a premium in some markets. This is accomplished by providing multiple trims and packages to engage with compound marketing segments. Furthermore, by providing financial incentives such as leases, flexible financial terms, and continue to promote their industry leading 10 year warranty as an increased value (Kia Motors Marketing Mix 2025: A Case Study – Latterly.org, 2025).

Place: KIA is a global market company with over 4,000 dealers in 170 countries. KIA maintains costs and consistency in its products by leveraging localized manufacturing and franchised dealers to maintain its brand consistency, but does also have a digital retail integration using its website to continue to scale its user base and allow for increased scaling to both brick and mortar but also direct-to-consumer movement and even after support for customer feedback (Kia Motors Marketing Mix 2025: A Case Study – Latterly.org, 2025).

Promotion: Marketing and promotion mix is focused on brand storytelling with the “Movement That Inspires” theme. KIA engages multi channel promotions to include sports sponsorships, digital media campaigns that include influencer collaboration, and experiential vehicle launches. Use of CRM and owner community programs are continually engaged to foster owner engagement and strengthen brand equity (Kia Motors Marketing Mix 2025: A Case Study – Latterly.org, 2025)

Maturity Stage: When a brand is well established and holds a stable market share and enjoys continued loyal customers. At this level the 4 P’s generally convert over to maintenance without complacency and will also involve brand extensions, diversification, or even new product lines that must be reliant on new and continued marketing to remain consistent in market place (Touhami, 2023).

An example of this brand is Nike Apparel

Product: As a mature company Nike enjoys the benefits of an older product life cycle and focuses on customer retention and innovation as its marketplace share is mostly established through its loyal customer base, but must always defend its brand equity and optimize profitability. This cycle is focused on product diversification and extensions so as to retain relevance. Nike established this by moving beyond athletic footwear and has expand into apparel, accessories, and even lifestyle products under different brands such as Nike, Air Jordan, Convers, Nike Pro, etc). However, despite Nike enjoying its establish core it must continue to innovate to include collaborations with product mix optimization with quality assurance and exclusivity to remain differentiated from competitors (Gregory, 2016).

Price: Due to its perceived high value perception it enjoys premium pricing in its mix and this allows for brand image reinforcement. This includes having price adjustments on newer innovative products and allows for discounts on seasonal clearances to protect their profits when revenues are diversified. Nike also, can adjust its prices as needed to strategically use this as a defensive tool against competitors to maintain market position with its premium positioning (LinkedIn, 2025).

Place: Nike has a diversified global distribution network in over 190 countries with outsourcing its factories and production to over 500 different factories in 42 countries. Nike uses omnichannel integration for availability of its products both in physical stores and e-commerce (website / app purchasing with direct ship for B2C). Nike traditionally has brand store strategic placement in high-traffic urban core and uses sports retail locations to maximize its visibility. Nike also invests heavily in its E-commerce for younger customers or those that are more tech savvy as they prefer ordering online and having the product shipped to them after they research the product online or see the product in store and then place the order online to decrease personal interactions with salespersons (Gregory, 2016).

Promotion: Nike focuses on its emotional engagement with its customers through brand loyalty via brand storytelling and community building through its mobile apps. Additionally, they have many contracts to drive marketing campaigns with assistance of both athletic endorsements and sponsorships . Nike has a history of community building through challenges such as “Just Do It” to inspire, create credibility, and value. Nike promotes and spends over billion dollars annually in advertising an promotion (approximately 10% of their total revenue). This is accomplished by use of digital marketing on social media, influencers, and even experiential events (pop ups). Overall Nike secures its marketplace through brand protection, customer retention, market saturation management, along with continual product innovations allowing for premium pricing to leverage its cost c0ntrol via its global distribution to to expand its global reach (LinkedIn, 2025).