Marketing And Management : Profit Assessment Answer

Marketing Mix of Apple Inc

Marketing mix (4 P’s) of Apple Inc shows the exact financial position of the company in North America. Marketing mix describes the whole strategic growth of the company. These are Product, Price, promotion and place (Khan 2014).

Product: Apple is continuously increasing its production every day to give more products to the country as well as outside country. Products are genuine of the company and people buy this at a great quantity in North America. The company increases its production every year because profit of the company increases every year. The company earns annual revenue of $233 billion approximately. Products of Apple Inc are more convenient in comparison to the other company by its target market value and competition in the market. The company produces electronic products such as iPad, iPod, iPhone, Mac, Apple TV, Apple watch, Software and much more. These products are sold by people in large quantity in the market of North America and over the worldwide (Greenwald 2013).

Price: The price strategy must use to enhance the market value and to find the exact position of the product within target market which helps in products differentiation. Production of the company is totally depends on the market value and price discrimination within the country. If demand of the product is more, the company increases its total revenue and decreases supply. On the other hand, if demand is less, the company decreases its total revenue and increases supply of the product in North America. As target market segmentation, the company offers some new and latest retails product to its customers to improve the performance of the company in North America. Price strategy is totally depends on the success of the company because it discloses the overall performance and market position of the company (Heracleous, 2013).

Promotion: Promotion is one of the major elements of marketing mix of Apple Inc which helps to make better performance of the company into global market segmentation. The company makes such promotion in some various ways of communication such as PR, advertising, social media, sales promotion and much more. With the help of these promotions, the company gets more customers for its products. If the market becomes perfectly competitive, the company must follow some specific guidelines to promote their business into international business. There is an IMC mix plan of the company into target market segmentation. The company also makes some promotion by providing company’s Email id and website through online to their customers in North America as well as other country. The company promotes its products to increase the margin of profit within the country (Czinkota & Ronkainen, 2013).

Place: A place refers to the production point which indicates the exact selling point of the company’s products. It is an important aspect of determination in the market to sale products as per availability of the people. Some consumers pay money as a premium for the effective location of products in the market. The company’s products are directly related with the consumer and it has direct channels with retail business. In order to make production at some specific places, the company needs to get approval with the government. The company is directly related with the government as the channels are of different types such as mass market, specialty and exclusive. These are the main ingredient for the location of company’s product. If the company is not built up at specific place, it may not run properly and can suffer from losses within the country (Tapp & Spotswood, 2013).

Marketing mix is very much needed to grow up the company in North America as well as into international market. These marketing mixes of Apple Inc can also be shown by the diagram which is shown bellow;

Figure 1: Marketing Mix of Apple Inc.

Source: (www.marketingteacher.com)

Positioning of Apple Inc

The positioning and growth of Apple Inc depend on the marketing growth and product development because it is necessary for the company to produce satisfactory products for people. There are some keys which help the in the growth and success of the company. The company exhausted $4.6 billion on R&D in the last four years and in the same years the company made revenue of $25 to $43 billion in the market. When Microsoft spent 700% of that R&D in the same period, it earned only $31 billion. On the other hand, Intel and Cisco exhausted around 400% and made profit of $23 billion in the same period of time. Product position of the company is on top position because it is the largest manufacturing company into global market. Now the company is running widely in North America and other country (Diamantopoulos, 2012).

Personal Selling Plan

Now the company is running well into worldwide and producing various products like iPad, iPod, iPhone, Mac, Apple TV, Apple watch, Software and much more. However, the company gives more focus on its Smartphone because people demand more for that product in the market. In today’s world, iPhone Smartphone, iPad and iPod is running well in the market and prices of the product are also high. Now most of the people are using iPhone and the company is trying to provide better services to the customers. For this, it is planning to set up new features in its existing products and also trying to produce some new hardy products to make more profit. However, the company plans for some future forecasting to provide better product facility to the customer. Though the company is widely running into global market, the company is not situated in some urban region of North America. It is planning to set up new branch of Apple in that place and planning to forecast in future and also planning to make company more profitable (Gershon, 2013).

Figure 2: Perceptual map of Apple

Source: (www.apple.in/perceptualmaps/)

Price Skimming of the company

The Company follows the guideline of price skimming when the new product of Apple launches in the market. It also sold this product at high price because of new launch in the market. There are some strategic steps of price skimming in the market such as strategic development, personal selling philosophy development, product development, customer strategy development and presentation strategy development. The company maintains this skimming to build up a genuine recover in its production and advertising cost of the company (Toptal & Çetinkaya, 2015).

Pricing competition of the company

The company faces perfect competition in the market to produce more goods and to satisfy the needs of people in North America and to the other country. The company does that to increase profit margin as well as efficiency of the company in North America. There are some prerequisite to make a better sale of products such as marketing growth, entrepreneurship analysis and product differentiation. Now the company is facing competition to increase the volume of sales and to make the company more profitable (Huang & Yuan, 2016).

Figure 3: Pricing competition

Source: (www.appleinc.com)

Penetration pricing of the company

The company is well known in North America and into the global market. As it is the largest manufacturing company in the world, it produces satisfactory and genuine products for the customer. The customers are more involved in the company because they are buying the company’s product at large quantity but all people in North America cannot buy the Apple’s products because the products are little luxurious. The company demands little higher for its products because the software of the product is hard (Du, & Chen, 2014).

Figure 4: Skimming and penetration pricing of Apple

Source: (www.appleinc.com)

Implementation

Apple is treated as the strongest and valuable company in the world which maintains the strategy of premium pricing in the Market. Though Apple has new arrived in the electronic market in outside country, the company is running well in the market and people demand more for the products of Apple. It gives more reflection to the China because there is an issue of low wage rate and the government of China is trying to reduce the related problem. In future, it might be very successful more than today if the low wage problem may reduce (Chan & Pun, 2013).

Conclusion

From the above discussion of Apple Inc, it has been concluded that the company is running well in the country and marketing mix is must maintained of the company. One of the largest assembling partners of the Apple ‘Foxconn’ considered that the company is having a low functioning condition. From the discussion it has been considered that the company is possessing vital strength which may use to address more effective organizational weakness. The company has best product positioning and price skimming strategy in the country. The company is also facing competition in the market to make more production and sell them into the market. The company’s products are directly related with the consumer and have direct channels with retail business. In order to make production at some specific places, the company needs to get approval of the government. In coming days the company can be more successful if it runs properly within the country.

References

Cotter, S. (2013). Class Assignment: ULC 257: Apple Inc (Doctoral dissertation, University at Buffalo Libraries).

Yoffie, D. B., & Rossano, P. (2012). Apple Inc. in 2012. Harvard Business School.

Bergvall-Kåreborn, B. and Howcroft, D., 2013, December. The Apple business model: Crowdsourcing mobile applications. In Accounting Forum(Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 280-289). Elsevier.

Blum, J. and Cullen, A., 2014. The Apple store and unconventional trademarks: how easy are they to enforce?. Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice, 9(12), pp.1008-1011.

Chan, J., Pun, N. and Selden, M., 2013. The politics of global production: Apple, Foxconn and China's new working class. New Technology, Work and Employment, 28(2), pp.100-115.

Duhigg, C. and Kocieniewski, D., 2012. How Apple sidesteps billions in taxes. The New York Times, 28, pp.1-5.

Greenwald, G. and MacAskill, E., 2013. NSA Prism program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others. The Guardian, 7(6), pp.1-43.

Liang, G., 2015. The “Fox–Apple” Partnership in the Global Value Chain: How Did Foreign Direct Investment and Contract Manufacturing Reshape the Landscape of the Electronics Industry?. VALUE ADDED IN TRADE, p.141.

Fitzgerald, J., Neal Cavanaugh, R. B., & Borden, N. (2014). CPR for the 4Ps Breathing New Life into the Marketing Mix. In International Academy of Business and Economics Conference.

Adams, M. E. (2016). Beyond the Glass: Examining Wine Tasting Room Profitability Using the 4Ps of the Marketing Mix (Doctoral dissertation, Virginia Tech).

Gershon, R. A. (2013). Digital media innovation and the Apple iPad: Three perspectives on the future of computer tablets and news delivery. Journal of Media Business Studies, 10(1), 41-61.

Toptal, A., & Çetinkaya, S. (2015). The impact of price skimming on supply and exit decisions. Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry,31(4), 551-574.

Du, P., & Chen, Q. (2014). Skimming or penetration: Optimal pricing of new fashion products in the presence of strategic consumers. Annals of Operations Research, 1-21.

He, B., Huang, H., & Yuan, K. (2016). Managing supply disruption through procurement strategy and price competition. International Journal of Production Research, 54(7), 1980-1999.