Marketing Management - Essay Example

When the consumer paid this price he was assured of top grade quality, hence he did not mind shelling out a low price compared to the retail price of a CD. He could also burn his own CDs and since he could do it several times the final cost was negligible when compared to the quality of the product he got. 3 Promotion. Image plays a very important role. Whether it is the image of the product which enhances value or status or the image of the buyer when he acquires a product or service, both factors are extremely important for the buyer in arriving at a purchase decision.

iTune was certainly something one could possess with pride. The mere ownership carried a premium as the performance was superior to any other product in the market. 4 Place or Time of offer. It is of great value to the buyer if a product or service is offered to him at a place and time that suits him. This is a particularly relevant feature in on-line sales of products as accessibility from anywhere and at anytime is the greatest attraction of such trades. The method of access devised by iTunes was simple and easy to manage.

There were no messy subscriptions and the download was quick and fast. The ease of access and use were fascinating for the user hence this became a useful factor in the popularity of the product. Although each of the above factors was well exploited by Apple yet iTune became popular mainly because of two of above factors. Firstly the product offered an opportunity to customers to acquire CD grade music from the net; a facility offered by the P2P service like Napster that was closed down by the law denying the pleasure of getting high class music files online.

The second was the Place and Time of offer that offered the convenience of acquisition at one’s choice. Among its rivals the closest ones also took advantage of the above factors but they relied more heavily on price cutting like in the case of Music.com who