The marketing strategy of Apple - Essay Example

Principle of Marketing Apple Inc. is a multinational company based in the United States, which specializes in designing, development, and selling of electronics to consumers, including phones, music players, computers, and computer software. Apple ranks second after Samsung, which is the most profitable information technology company in the world. Nonetheless, the success of Apple Inc. is associated with its marketing strategy, which is considered effective. Apple employs a simple marketing strategy, which involves its consumers, thus giving the company an edge over other companies in the information technology industry (Nosal Web). However, if Apple could consider improving its marketing strategy, this would guarantee it more profits and continued competitiveness in the market. Therefore, this essay focuses on the marketing strategy of Apple, and how this could be improved using the marketing mix, to ensure more profits for the company. The marketing strategy of Apple is based on three main important factors. These are trust, communication, and focus. The company believes that it is important to be clear on the information the company wants to pass to consumers through advertisements. This therefore, results in a focused communication with consumers. On trust, Apple aims at producing quality products, instead of competing with other companies. The high quality of Apple products ensures customer loyalty. For this reason, Apple does not throw its products at consumers in its adverts; instead, the company only explains how the new product works, including the features that it possesses (Nosal Web). Apart from the simplicity of the marketing strategy of Apple, this also exhibits a great level of differentiation. The company puts great efforts in ensuring that its products are highly differentiated from other products produced by its competitors. The design of Apple’s product is superior, compared to that of its competitors, thus ensuring its differentiation. In addition, Apple wants its consumers to have a good experience using its products. Therefore, the company develops both software and hardware to enable customers to enjoy using its products (Bui Web). Since the quality of Apple products is high, the company also sells these products at a higher price. Apple is known as a “high-price” leader in the information technology industry. However, today, Apple attempts to lower the price of its products, as a strategy of increasing its customer base. Alternatively, Apple produces complex products at a high price, and then produces lower-price versions of such products, which have fewer features, thus suiting the needs of diverse customers (Bui Web).With regard to distribution; Apple has a total number of stores exceeding 300, with about 50 stores in California, where the company has its headquarters. The Apple staff in these distribution stores offer full service to customers. However, the staff is not trained on selling skills, but only on addressing customer problems and queries on how different products work (Bui Web). This marketing strategy for Apple is appropriate for the company, since it has worked on increasing the company’s profits over the years. First, this marketing strategy does not base on beating or competing with competitors. However, Apple focuses solely on the design and nature of its products to have an edge over competitors. Apple does not compare itself with its competitors such as Microsoft, but instead focuses on its own self-improvement, to remain competitive in the industry. In addition, the fact that the company aims at developing a pleasant experience for its customers, shows that the company is focused on customer needs and not its desire for profits, like other companies in the industry. Nonetheless, customer-centeredness is a great value, which Apple has adopted in its marketing strategy, which therefore, makes the strategy effective and agreeable. Although Apple has performed well in the market for the past decades, today there are concerns that the company revenues have dropped significantly since the exit of Steve Jobs, the former company C.E.O, who was considered a game changer in the company (Nosal Web). Therefore, it is essential that Apple considers revamping and improving on some of its marketing strategies, in order to increase the effectiveness of its marketing strategies. The current marketing strategies of Apple can therefore, be improved and developed basing on the concept of marketing mix. Marketing mix is an important aspect for company marketing in the modern era. This mainly includes different elements, which a company can control, and which are aimed at realizing the right response from the target market. The elements in the marketing mix also help a company to increase the demand of its products among the target consumers (Kotler and Armstrong 66). In addition, Proctor (54) notes that marketing mix plays the role of strategic communication between a company and its customers. A new and improved marketing strategy of Apple can therefore, be achieved by basing on the elements of marketing mix. Marketing mix comprises of four major elements, also known as the “4Ps of Marketing.” These are the marketing strategies of product, price, place, and promotion. All these elements aim at influencing the target market segment in a positive way, which will make them buy the products being marketed by the company. With regard to the element of product, Apple must ensure that it upholds the aspects of quality, variety, design, features, and brand name. Nonetheless, it is evident that Apple has put more efforts in developing its products, which are considered to be of high quality and with great features, which are in line with modern technology. However, Apple should address the aspect of variety in its products, producing a wide range of products, so that every consumer has many options to choose from. Product pricing is core to a company and its marketing. This determines whether consumers will buy the product or not. However, the quality and features of the product influence this. Currently, Apple is known to attach high prices to its products, compared to its competitors. Therefore, this limits the consumers of Apple products to those people with a higher economic status, leaving out most average and low-income earners. Therefore, for Apple to ensure effective marketing, it must consider most of the average income-earners, by developing products, which have a pricing that these can afford. Apple could produce a variety of high quality products with different number of features, thus, enabling the price to be determined by the number of features of its products. Although a common assumption is that customers will buy products sold at a lower price, this is false, as the quality of products also matter to consumers (Kotler and Armstrong 69). Therefore, Apple could sell its products at a considerably lower price without compromising the quality of the products. The company could also include discounts, allowances, and payment periods as strategies applied to product pricing. Allowances and discounts for consumers on specific special days could increase the sales of the company. Similarly, granting payment periods to some customers could attract more customers to the company. Promotion is another vital aspect of marketing mix. Here, Apple should invest more in its product promotional activities. This is through advertising, sales promotion, and public relations (Kotler and Armstrong 72). Apple does not conduct sales promotion, as the company does not consider sales and profits as its main interest. The staff in Apple’s distribution stores are only trained in customer care, and not sales. On the other hand, adverts of Apple products are about the product, its feature, and how it works, and do not attempt to appeal to the consumers to purchase the product. Nonetheless, sales promotion is important in a company, as this boosts the sales. Therefore, Apple should reconsider investing in sales promotion as a way of reaching more of its target consumers. Finally, placement is key to marketing of Apple products. The company has about 300 distribution stores globally, while it concentrates more in California, where it has its headquarters. Therefore, this shows that Apple has limited distribution channels, and thus, needs to open up more channels in different world regions where high sales are guaranteed. This is a marketing strategy, which will ensure that Apple products are available to a large number of people (Proctor 68). In conclusion, Apple Inc. has registered great success in the information technology industry, because of the marketing strategy it adopts. However, there are few weaknesses in its marketing strategy, which could be corrected basing on the 4Ps of marketing. Therefore, the aspects of product, price, promotion, and placement must be considered by Apple, and aligned with its marketing strategy in order to ensure maximum sales revenue for the company. Works Cited Bui, Dave. “The Best of Apple’s Marketing Strategies,” 2012. Web. Viewed 16 Aril 2013, Kotler, Philip and Armstrong, Gary. “Principles of Marketing”, 10th Ed. New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc., 2004. Nosal, Chris. “Apple Marketing Strategies,” n.d. Web. Viewed 16 April 2013, < http://chrisnosal.com/Apple-Marketing-Strategies.pdf> Proctor, Tony. “Strategic Marketing: An Introduction.” London: Routledge, 2000. Read More