Basics
Marketing Concept
Reflectively, marketing involves the process of designing, reviewing, presenting, and analyzing the response of a market towards a product. The Apple Company will adopt the five stage process in order to assess the business because customers are unresponsive to poor quality products. The Apple Company marketing team will identify unique characteristics of the company’s products by comparing them with those of the competitors, assessing the emotional demand from the customers’ perspective, and establishing out the limitations of the competitors.
The business will design a unique campaign awareness plan to move forward and gain competitive advantage in the global PC market. The firm will also utilize exclusive and extraordinary ways in the provision of services such as an easy to use iTune application. The exclusive and extraordinary procedures will add competitive advantage to the firm over its rivals.
Market segment and target market characterization
The target market for the Apple marketing plan is customers of all ages who depend on Apple products on a daily basis. The target market consists of families and individuals who are in need of the various PC products offered the company. On the other hand, the market segment will consist of companies, colleges, hospitals, retailers, government agencies, and private ventures who uses PC products on the daily basis is running their businesses, research, communication, and production. The company’s products will be presented as the most affordable, easy to maintain, and most efficient PC gadgets in the business, learning, and logistics environments.
Central Positioning
Since Apple Company will utilize its expertise and innovative capabilities to ensure development and sale of advanced products besides focus on its services and products differentiation, successful implementation of this marketing plan will help the company recover its market leader position from the Samsung Company. The company must outrun the Samsung, Motorola, and Blackberry to become the global PC market leader. Apple Company’s services and products differentiation is critical amid intense competition particularly in new markets where the businesses function on augmented value, placing and pricing pillars.
Marketing Mix
The 5Ps of marketing mix is defined by Product, Place, Price, Promotion, and People as part of market segmentation. Due the unique characteristics of the Apple Company’s industry of operation, it is vital to balance the elements of intangibility, inseparability, and heterogeneity in the 5Ps. Therefore, it is important to establish means and ways of reaching the potential market consisting of sensitive clients.
Apple Company has developed very strong product, place, and promotion mixes in the marketing of the different products. Apple is the leading innovator and provider of quality products. In fact, 5% of the revenues are channeled to distribution, product development, and promotion activities. However, the company has a weak market mix in relation to price and people. Considering the magnitude of its revenues, Apple Company has not invested much on its customers in the form of corporate social responsibility strategies. Besides, Apple’s products are one of the most expensive in the US PC market.
Since the company sells its products to different consumer segments, it is necessary to properly outline the place element in the marketing mix. To achieve this, the company should differentiate its market segments along consumer-based market segmentation procedures. Specifically, Apple should invest more in CSR activities. The customers will respond by buying more products from the company. As a result of the increased customer traffic, the company will be in a position to offer interesting discounts to counter the low prices offered by its competitors.
Consumer Buying Behavior
Consumer behavior is a decision-making process and all activities that a potential customer is involved in prior to acquisition, evaluation, use, and disposition of goods and services. Apple’s customers are generally influenced by two factors: internal influences and external influences. Internal influences are personal feelings and thought that includes self-concept, motivation, attitudes, emotions and perceptions since the Apple culture has turned into a movement and a class statement in the US and global PC market.
The company has been successful in influencing perception, purchasing patterns, and attitude customers develop towards its products, especially the smart phone series. However, the company should pay attention to the average market price of its competitors’ products to positively cue the mind of potential customers into buying the brand Apple.
Branding and Product Lifecycle
This Apple’s unique iPhone brand has won the heart of customers across the world. The weakness of the Apple brand has been its association with the Americanization culture hence limiting its acceptance in some cultures against the western culture. In order to strengthen the competitiveness and equity of the Apple brand, the company should invest in latest technology to modify the iPhone brand as the leading technology oriented product. The Apple brand falls in the growth stage. In order to ensure that the customer remains eternally connected to the Apple brand, it is important to develop a highly structured marketing distribution channel to capture the fastest growing markets such as France, the UK, China, and Japan where the innovative and stylistic design of Apple iPhone 4 has become a household name.