Course Project - Case Study Example

While trying to identify the reasons associated with the success of the strategies for Apple IPod, focus has to be given on a number of issues. The first reason that needs to be highlighted is that the company Apple provides a lot of focus on introducing innovation in its products (Travlos, 2013). Secondly, the company prefers to promote simplicity in its product offerings. By having a highly simplistic kind of a user interface for the IPod, the company was able to create a favourable point of difference for its music product (Bajarin, 2012).

The third factor is that the IPod was launched in the market along with a bundled free service offering. The free service offering which is popularly known as iTunes, helped in a great way in enhancing the customer experience for the product (LePage, 2006). The fourth factor that administered success to the IPod is the unique way of product marketing and branding by Apple. Since marketing is all about generating interest in the minds of the consumers, the marketing approach of Apple was more focused on generating the buzz for the new product offering of the company at the time of launch.

Also, the company focused on positioning the product as a fashion accessory, thereby triggering a further demand for the product (Weisbein, 2008). Finally, the last reason for success of the Apple IPod is the ability of the company to create a captive audience. By designing the highly fashionable lifestyle natured music device in a way, that it will accept only inputs from the company’s music website, helped in a great way in creating a captive audience, which automatically generated a huge amount of revenue for the company (Schulhof, 2006, p. 2). Mini Case 2: Failure The second mini case focuses on discussing the reasons leading to failure for a strategy of a particular company.

For the purpose of relevance, the company that has been selected is Nokia, which is a globally present mobile manufacturing and marketing company. Talking more about the company, it needs special highlighting that Nokia in the last couple of years, has lost its market dominance position to various other competitors like Apple, Samsung, etc. On conducting an in-depth analysis, various points of flaws have been revealed. The first factor that has to be considered is that the telecom company lost its product related edge in the market.

While its competitors focused on strongly promoting products which are high on innovative features, the company took a laid back approach (ET Bureau, 2013). Secondly, the company failed in a great way to identify the changing and rapidly evolving global mobile market. While the market was to Smartphones with touch features developed by its competitors, Nokia stuck for a considerable amount of time to with promoting Smartphones that lacked uniqueness in its product offering (News, 2012). Thirdly, the factor of brand positioning has to be taken into consideration.

The bulky phone presented by Nokia lost its edge in the market when competing with other popular brands which are high on style and product appeal. Over a period of time, due to loss of brand appeal, Nokia’s products looked very old fashioned as compared to the rival’s homogenous and alternative product offerings (Chang, 2012). Cross Case analysis For the purpose of conducting a cross case analysis, it needs to be mentioned that both Apple and Nokia fall in the industry category of electronics.