Describe the nature or characteristics of product life cycle costing? (Part 2 of 4) January 25, 2010 by CHARACTERISICS OF PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE COSTING The main characteristics of product life cycle costing comprises: tracing of costs and revenues of each product over the several calendar periods throughout their entire life cycle traces research and design and development costs and total magnitude of these costs for each individual product and compared with product revenue report generation for costs and revenues.