Choose a business firm and discuss What is consumer's perception about the firm and its product - Term Paper Example

Apple Inc This paper chooses Apple Inc for the study of consumer’s perception about goods, because Apple Inc has emerged to be one of the most successful and powerful brands around the world. It is an American based multinational company that designs and produces computers, peripherals, digital players, phones and software etc with greater emphasis on innovation and technology, and markets them through own-retail outlets, online stores and third party sellers (Sander and Slatter, 2009, p. 81).

Apple Inc always thrived on innovation (Kerin, Hartley and Berkowitz, 2005, p. 395) especially through on-going product and brand differentiation. The relentless efforts of Apple to focus on ease of use, simplicity, utility, efficiency and fun has helped the company make its new variants of products such as iPhone, iPhone-3G, iPhone- 4-G etc to be very different species than that of its competitors (Newsweek, 2007). Consumers of Apple products expect unique values and technology advantages from Apple’s computers as well as its digital players and phones.

The company is very particular about the value propositions and almost all of its efforts including R&D are meant to satisfy consumers’ expectation of values and innovation. . l different factors that may impact the perception, the real experiences of consumers after using or buying a product brings the true perception in their minds. Miller, Miller and Miller (2007, p. 16) described that a consumer’s perception about a company or its offerings is based on their past experiences with the company or its offerings, companies that offer similar products or services, and information they have got from friends, family and colleagues.

Consumers almost always compare the values, benefits and general features of two or more similar products and services and this comparison in turn form perception in their minds. It is thus closely related to brand positioning and brand image. Consumers’ perception about Apple and its products Though there are discussions regarding Apple’s brand image and consumers’ perception before and after the resignation of its founder Steve Jobs (Hughes, 2011), one thing remained constant that Apple is well known for its technology.

Until 1990s, Apple was costing on borrowed technology, but Steve Jobs realized that a company cannot stay long on ‘technology leader’ strategy without becoming a technology creator. After 1997, Apple made four segmentations of its products and innovated in the way it produced and marketed its products (Betz, 2002, p. 194- 195). As Hoskisson, Hitt and Ireland (2008,p. 133) noted, Apple’s market effort was to develop computers and other offerings that are highly differentiated with help of latest technology.

The product differentiation strategy that has implemented has thus created a unique history of its own through very distinctive products ever-available in the market such as iMac, iBook, iTune, iLife, iMusic, iPad, iPod, iPhone and so on. The company approached its market and