When shift from question mark to star is unlikely, the BCG matrix suggests divesting the question mark and repositioning its resources more effectively in the remainder of the corporate portfolio. If question marks do not succeed in becoming a market leader, then after perhaps years of cash consumption, they will degenerate into dogs when market growth declines. Question marks have a potential to gain market share and become stars, and eventually cash cows when market growth slows.

They are a starting point for most businesses. Question marks (also known as a problem child or Wild dogs) are businesses operating with a low market share in a high-growth market.Dogs, it is thought, should be sold off once short-time harvesting has been maximized.

They depress a profitable company's return on assets ratio, used by many investors to judge how well a company is being managed. Though owning a break-even unit provides the social benefit of providing jobs and possible synergies that assist other business units, from an accounting point of view such a unit is worthless, not generating cash for the company. These units typically 'break even', generating barely enough cash to maintain the business's market share.

Dogs, more charitably called pets, are units with low market share in a mature, slow-growing industry.

Cash 'milked' is used to fund stars and question marks, that are expected to become cash cows some time in the future. They are to be 'milked' continuously with as little investment as possible, since such investment would be wasted in an industry with low growth. They are regarded as staid and boring, in a 'mature' market, yet corporations value owning them due to their cash-generating qualities. These units typically generate cash in excess of the amount of cash needed to maintain the business.

Cash cows is where a company has high market share in a slow-growing industry.

To use the chart, analysts plot a scatter graph to rank the business units (or products) on the basis of their relative market shares and growth rates. This helps the company allocate resources and is used as an analytical tool in brand marketing, product management, strategic management, and portfolio analysis. The purpose of the matrix is to help corporations to analyze their business units, that is, their product lines. Henderson popularized the concept in an essay titled 'The Product Portfolio' in BCG's publication Perspectives in 1970. The growth–share matrix (aka the product portfolio matrix, Boston Box, BCG-matrix, Boston matrix, Boston Consulting Group analysis, portfolio diagram) is a chart created in a collaborative effort by BCG employees: Alan Zakon first sketched it and then, together with his colleagues, refined it.

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