Brand Management of Apple Inc - Essay Example

? BRAND MANAGEMENT OF APPLE INC 13th, November, Brand Management of Apple Inc. The process of creating an inner connection with the product of a certain company is known as brand identity. The process aims at creating an emotional perception of the brand in the minds of the consumers in order to be able to create a competitive advantage over the company’s rivals. Brand management also aims at building loyalty among consumers of a certain brand. The process of brand management includes developing promises to the consumers of the brand, making the promises, and maintaining the promises. This paper looks at the brand created by Apple Company. Apple Company is one of the largest technological companies in the world. The company develops consumer electronic gadgets such as desktops, laptops, smartphones, computers, iPods, and tablets. The company has, however, managed to maintain a good brand image to its customers even after the death of its founder Steve Jobs. Due to its large size, Apple Company has formed a large conglomerate, which has enabled the company to edge out its competitors. The large company has gained competitive advantage as well as economies of scale over other similar companies in the in the same market (Mehling 1997). Apple Company has managed to achieve these developments through creating a brand image. A brand image is the consumer level of association with products developed by the company. Apple is well known for creating high quality products, which are unique in the market. For instance, the company manufactures the iPhone brand of smartphones that uses a unique operating system known as iOS. The iPhone smartphone is the highest selling smartphone in the market with sales exceeding 3 million during the first month after the phone is released into the market. Brand awareness created by the company has also contributed to the growth of the company. In brand awareness, the consumers of the product associate themselves with the brand that they want to buy. It is also defined as the degree to which potential customers recognize a brand whereby they associate it with a particular product. Brand awareness is mostly expressed as a percentage of the target market. The primary goal of advertising for any company at the first stages of introduction is to achieve brand awareness. Apple Company has made numerous advertisements in the media with the intention of creating awareness of its product to potential consumers. Advertisements by the company have played a huge role in creating consumer awareness of the product (Mehling 1997). In order for the company to reach that level, it has taken into consideration various marketing strategies. One of them is the use of 3 C’s marketing strategy. The three C’s in marketing refers to the corporation itself, the customers, and the level of competition in the market. A company’s foremost concern is the consumer awareness of the products that the company is dealing with. In customer-based strategies, Apple Company has achieved success through segmentation. Segmentation is done in consideration of the different ways in which customers use the products. Apple Company is the world’s prominent subdivision implementing company. The subdivision strategy applied by the company has led the company acquiring surprising growth in sales, revenues, profits, and business rankings (Schick 1997). Apple Inc. has applied a vertical market segmentation policy, which involves making a product for each use case. Additionally, the Apple Inc. is able to sell the merchandises at the right price for only the moneymaking market section. Using this policy, the Apple has also been able to ascertain the market section that pays more, for the precise merchandise, which the company offers. Furthermore, nice and easy to use users practice in addition to high-class merchandises, which offer all-in-one amalgamation, symbolizes the Apple’s products. More significantly, the Apple disregards potential consumers who are not willing to pay for their price. While using the cost leadership, Apple is able to employ manual labor at a lower cost, upholds, and gives them training at cheaply so that they can provide the lowermost potential cost of production (Creamer 2012). The company has also used corporate based strategy to achieve high levels of success. The corporate strategy aims at maximizing the company’s strengths in relation to the level of competition of their products. Apple Company uses selective and sequencing strategy in order to win the competition in the smart phones markets. The company has gained a decisive edge in the development of high quality smartphones, thus, gaining a competitive advantage over its rivals. Moreover, the company operates at a low cost due to outsourcing of both labor and raw materials. Moreover, Apple Company is able to operate at a low cost and gain market leadership. Besides, it is able to produce cheaper than other companies, despite the fact that the company’s products are expensive to meet the expense and retain. Apple Company has also embarked on using competitor-based strategies in order to curb increasing competition. The company has been able to use the power of an image, which it generated to outsell their competitors (Mehling 1997). This is because the company invested heavily in creating good public relations with potential customers mostly in the US where the company has segmented the market. Apple Company has invested heavily in promotions and advertisements that have created awareness of the company’s products. When the level of competition in the smartphone market becomes excess, positive differentiation through brand image becomes the only way to identify the best product. Apple has by far been the greatest beneficially of the power of the image, which it has created in comparison to other brands such as Motorola and Samsung (Booker 2007). The company has also benefited greatly by investing in profit and cost structure differences. This has been done by exploiting the source profit difference. Such profits include profits from product sales and profits from services. Moreover, in implementing the 3C’s marketing strategy, the company has also employed tactics for flyweights since the company has invested heavily in mass media advertising. Furthermore, the company has invested in massive research and development efforts that have differentiated the company from other competitors (Herner 2011). References Booker, E 2007, "Apple's masterful marketing of iPhone", B to B, vol. 92, no. 9, pp. 8-8. Creamer, M 2012, "Apple's first marketing master still has advice for startups,” Advertising Age, vol. 83, no. 9, pp. 14-n/a. Herner, Z 2011, "Importance of Marketing for Apple Producers in Croatia,” Ekonomska Istrazivanja, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 420-430. Mehling, H 1997, "Apple seeks to tame pricing, fine-tune marketing strategy,” Computer Reseller News, no. 761, pp. 113-114. Schick, S 1997, “Apple baking up direct sales strategy,” CEDROM-SNi fbo Transcontinental, Willowdale, Canada, Willowdale. Read More