Porter (amongst others) has criticised this type of technique for 4 reasons:
1. The length of the stages in the cycle can vary enormously from industry to industry and it is often not very clear what stage the industry is in.
2. Industry growth does not always go through the typical s-shape described by Hofer and Schendel. Some industries go straight from growth to decline and some industries revitalise themselves during a decline. Other industries do not have a slow introductory growth stage but enter directly into a sharp growth phase.
3. Firms can alter the life-cycle shape themselves through product innovation, creative marketing and repositioning. If a company takes the life cycle as a given, it can become a self fulfilling prophesy.
4. Competition at each stage of the life cycle is different in different industries.
Porter argues that except for industry growth, there is little or no rationale for the reason competitive changes associated with the life cycle will occur. Nothing in the life cycle concept allows us to predict when it will hold and when it will not.
This in turn raises the concern of the appropriateness of the generic strategies at each position of the matrix.