Brand Positioning: Apple Computer, Inc - Case Study Example

Case study: Brand Positioning Apple Inc. (Name) (Course) (Institution) (Instructor) Date: Introduction A brand is a name, symbol, sign, term or a design that a firm uses to differentiate its products or services from those of its rivals. On the other hand, brand positioning is the approach used by a company to find a niche for their products (Olsson and Sandru, 2006). Brand positioning has become increasingly essential to companies as they try to reach out to consumers. As competition stiffens, companies and organizations are finding it inevitable to have an extra attribute or element that make them stand out from their competitors (Barnett, 2008). Similarly, the electronic business has grown tremendously over the last decade which has necessitated the players in the industry to position their brands. Basically, brand positioning is a process where the company seeks to build the brand image to their customers and for their competitors. To remain in the game therefore entail consideration of the company’s strength as well as those of the competitors. This work focuses on the case of Sony electronics brand positioning strategy. Company Overview Formerly referred to as Apple Computer, Inc., Apple Inc. is an international company headquartered in the United States which designs and markets consumer electronics, personal computers and computer software. It was founded in 1976, and has blossomed to be a pace setter in the technological and information telecommunication business. Among its popular products entail the iPhone, the iPod, the iPad and the Macintosh line of computers (Eric, 2009). Besides, it has various software designed to work with its products such as the Mac OS X operating system, the iWork suite of productive software, logic studio, iTunes media browser, Aperture, iOS, the safari web browser, among others (Leavitt, 2007). Apple Inc. is the third largest market leader in the phone industry after Nokia and Samsung Electronics. Its revenues are more than $60 billion, thanks to the company’s unique brand positioning strategy (Erick, 2009). Vision and Mission Statement Apple’s vision is to be a global leader in consumer electronic business. The late and former CEO for Apple, Steve Jobs envisioned that by 2020, every desk will have an Apple computer. This is also in line with the company’s mission statement which is to continue making innovatory and state-of-the-art products to its users such as the iPod, the iPad, and the iPhone. Besides, the company focuses on taking part in Corporate Social Responsibilities as a way of giving back to the society. Competition As mentioned earlier, Apple Inc. is the third largest manufacturer of consumer electronics after Nokia and Samsung. This means that, Apple faces stiff competition in the computer and mobile phone market. Being a big player in the market, Apple has to adopt comprehensive branding management strategies in order to remain relevant in the market. The mobile market particularly has been flooded with major competitors of iPhone 4S being Nokia Lumia, Galaxy SIII and Galaxy Nexus other Android operating phones (Rene, 2012; Arico, 2011). The iPad market has also in the recent past been diluted by the introduction of the Microsoft tablet and Samsung tablets (Arthur, 2012). Hence, there’s need for Apple to fight vigorously for a market niche. Apple’s branding Apple is a symbolic brand. Unlike functional brands, emotional dimension is more dominant than the functional dimension. Apple being a symbolic brand has developed several products that are also symbolically branded. The likes of the iPhone, the iPad, iPod, iMac and other brands are just symbolic in nature and have no functional relation. With the heightened global competition in business, customers need a valid reason for purchasing a given commodity or a service. Such a reason emanates from positioning and differentiation strategies of the company, as they explain what’s unique in the company’s brand. Devoid of this, customers may find no reason to purchasing a certain product over that of its competitors (Sharp and Dawes, 2001). Product differentiation entails distinguishing a company’s product from those of rival companies as well as from the company’s own product offering. On the other hand, brand positioning regards how a company differentiates a given product. Apple is a company and has narrowed down to launch various brands while still expanding the company. The introduction of individual brands is in a positioning strategy that has seen Apple build its name. Positioning strategy Apple Inc. has positioned itself to wealthy, youthful, upper class, and innovative customers. This is attributed to the point that, the company’s products are costly and cannot be afforded by the poor. Apple has been creating a great reputation and a strong brand. Apple is in fact the most expensive brands globally (Miguel, 2003). By default, everyone relates Apple with innovation, quality, design and being different. Apple cannot create products that are short of innovations, high quality, and design as they would only ruin their brand and lose sales significantly. Quality and innovation are linked to high cost value, the high cost guarantees the consumer that he is purchasing an incredible product. This is psychology in marketing and is a classic business model (Miguel, 2003). Human psychology dictates that, the higher the cost, the better the quality and vise versa. Cheap Apple products would insinuate low quality and frantic need for money, which would distort the Apple brand in good times and possibly be more dangerous in future than just trying to overcome difficult times. Thus, reducing the prices of apple brand may boost sales, but it will hurt the brand in the long run, as the company will not be able to raise prices during yielding times (Keller, 2009). Apple has assumes different brand positioning and product differentiation strategies especially for its products to be unique and to appeal to the target customers. Fundamentally, Apple has adopted the following brand positioning strategies; Quality Positioning The notion of quality is arguably one of the most salient features for a brand to have. Quality perception is in the buyer’s mind. Creating a strong perception of quality helps the company to be successful in creating a great brand. As put forth by Ries (2002), the best way of boost perception of quality is to refine the focus of the company. They argue that, when the focus of a product is narrowed, the company becomes a professional as opposed to a generalist, and a professional is believed to know more or be of ultimate quality than a generalist. Apple has adopted this theory of brand management. It has focused on specializing on consumer electronics since January 2007, a decision which saw the company drop its last name Apple Computer Inc. to just Apple Inc. This was in an effort to position its brand as specialist in consumer electronics. Sure enough, Apple was successful as it has since then risen to greater heights in consumer electronics products such as the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad which are surely a unique brand with salient features distinct from its competitor’s products. Consequently, Apple Inc. has always placed a higher price tag to its brand. This is another approach of building the notion of high quality. Majority of people believe that they can differentiate a high quality product from another, but in the real sense, it’s not as direct as it seems (Anonym, 2007). High price tags are a helpful to some consumers, as it sanctions the wealthy consumer to achieve psychological contentment from the public purchase and use of a high end product. Obviously, the product does not necessarily have some variations or perk to justify the higher price (Anonym, 2007). This is evident in all the Apple products. For instance, the succession of its most popular brands, the iPhone and the iPad has come under great criticism due to their similarity. iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S for instance are basically believed to have very minimal differences, but iPhone 4S was placed as a new and an expensive edition that saw Apple sales shoot after its launch. Feature Driven Positioning This is a positioning strategy in which the marketers rely on the features of the product or a service to distinguish their brands than any other approach. The good thing is that, the message is normally perfect and the positioning will be reliable if the facts about the product are emphasized (Anonym, 2007). Regrettably, feature oriented positioning are often rendered impractical if the completion comes out with a rapid or more developed model. Apple has successfully adopted feature driven positioning strategy for a long time (Sengupta, 2005). Apple products came into the market with a new whole idea of consumer electronics, full of innovative and technological touch that largely dominated the market. In fact, Apple’s brand was shaped through feature positioning and has hitherto remained competitive in the market. The use of apple designed software in their products is a special feature that came in handy in feature positioning strategy. Nevertheless as theory suggests, when competition produces more advanced makes of competitor products, feature oriented positioning becomes impractical (Anonym, 2007). This have been faced by Apple in the recent past as competitor companies such as Samsung have devised smarter phones especially with the help of the Google’s Android technology that has revolutionized the world of consumer electronics. Alternative Positioning Strategy for Apple Based on the current trend in the world of consumer electronics, Apple needs to adopt other brand positioning strategies to remain relevant to the market. With the rapid advancement in technology and especially the Google’s Android technology, and the development of windows 8 operating system by Microsoft; it is only obvious that competition is going to be stiffer (Arthur, 2012). Considering that most of the competitor products are cheaper as compared to Apple brands, despite them having nearly similar features, it’s time for Apple Inc. to adopt value positioning strategy. In value positioning strategy, brands seek to emphasize on value at reasonable prices (Heding, 2009). In other words, Apple will need to maintain high quality products, at a lower price in order to remain competitive. For instance, Southwest Airlines started giving discounted services to its customers and was still able to maintain its strong brand identity, contrary to the notion that, services or products that are cheap are of low value. As a matter of fact, several airlines were forced to follow suit by “rolling out value-priced flights under new co-branded names” (Anonym, 2007). Apples Position in 5 years Since Apple has maintained a strong brand name so far, the company is likely to become a market leader in consumer electronics. This is attributed to the company’s ability to maintain high technology and innovation in their products. Apple has been able to remain innovative as seen in its successive launch of iPad and iPhone series. Currently, Apple is scheduled to release its iPad 4 which is highly anticipated. However, the company will need to adopt value positioning strategy to improve its market position. Conclusion The world of computer and communication technology is changing day in day out. The advancement in technological innovations is also making the consumer electronics market more competitive than ever. The increase in competition necessitates all industry players to be unique by positioning themselves in the market. Various positioning strategies are available but they depend on the type of the product and the company’s choice. Apple Inc. has a strong brand name; however competition remains a threat to Apple’s products. Its main products the iPhone is facing competition from Samsung’s products such as, Galaxy SIII, Nokia Lumia, etc. The iPad on the other hand is facing completion from Samsung Tablet and Microsoft Tablet. Currently, Apple is doing quite well through quality positioning and feature positioning brand management strategies. However, with the trend in the industry, there is need to adopt value positioning strategy in order to improve its market in the next five years. This will entail the company maintaining high quality brands at competitive prices. References Anonym, 2007, Brand Positioning Strategies, available http://www.brandxpress.net/2005/10/brand-positioning-strategies/ [Accessed July 23, 2012] Arico, J. 2011, Samsung Galaxy Nexus to Compete With IPhone 4S http://www.mobiledia.com/news/112968.html [July 24, 2012] Arthur, C. 2012, Microsoft 'to launch tablet to compete with iPad' http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jun/17/microsoft-tablet-compete-ipad-apple [Accessed July 23, 2012] Barnett, R 2008, Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations, Oxford: Oxford University Press David, R 2010, Strategic management: concepts and cases, Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice-Hall. Heding, T. 2009, Brand management: Research, theory and practice. London New York: Routledge. Keller, F 2009, Market Positioning & Framing Market Research, London: Oxford University press. Leavitt, D. 2007, The Man Who Knew Too Much; Alan Turing and the invention of the computer. Phoenix: Oxford University Press. Miguel, 2003, Analyzing Apple’s Market Position, available http://www.osnews.com/story/3921 [Accessed July 23, 2012] Olsson, A. and Sandru, C. 2006, The brand proposition: Positioning and building brand personality Rene R. 2012, Samsung announces Galaxy S III, biggest iPhone competitor to date http://www.imore.com/samsung-announces-galaxy-iii-biggest-iphone-competitor-date [Accesed July 24, 2012] Ries, A. 2002, The 22 immutable laws of branding: How to build a product or service into a world-class brand. New York: HarperBusiness. Sengupta, S. 2005, Brand positioning: Strategies for competitive advantage. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill. Sharp, B and Dawes, J 2001, "What is Differentiation and How Does it Work?," Journal of Marketing Management, 17, 739-59. Read More