Product Life Cycle and Export Competitiveness of the UK Electronics Industry (1970–1979)

The dominance of multinational firms with developed global scanning capacities for sourcing and marketing in the early 1970s has led people to consider if the product life cycle approach to international manufacturing and marketing is still valid. The usefulness of this approach is examined by fitting a logistic growth curve on the 1970–1979 trade data of the UK electronics industry. It is shown that although still valid, the international product life cycle model should combine with the theory of comparative costs to provide a more satisfactory explanation of the pattern of trade, as it is only applicable to manufactured goods.