Marketing Management: Apple Inc, Research Paper Example

This paper gives an analysis of the four cardinal components of the marketing mix and looks at how these components have been put into use by Apple Inc in marketing their computers and achieving good market response. The paper also seeks to look at how the said company has responded to changes and pressures at the market place in their efforts to maintain their sales records.

Apple Inc is a company incorporated in 1977 as Apple Computer Inc and later changed the name to Apple Inc in 2007 (Form 8K SEC). At the time of changing the name they had moved from being a purely computer company to include consumer electronics in their product range. The company is incorporated primarily in California USA however they have gained global coverage with their products being found in most if not countries.

The marketing mix is defined as a set of controllable variables and their levels that an organization uses to influence the market (BPP 2009). The variables are namely product place promotion and price. These variables have to give a favorable mix and interplay to secure customer interest and eventual customer satisfaction which is vital in achieving customer loyalty. These variables have been exploited successfully by apple computers to achieve favorable business record and therefore will be looked at separately.

Product

The product is not just a mere thing with desirable features but also a package of benefits designed to meet needs or provide the desired solutions to a customer. Services can therefore be viewed as products in the perspective of the marketing mix. (Pride, W., Ferrell, O.C. 2007).  The product in case is the computers as the core product as well as the augmented product which are the consumer electronics that are part of the Apple Inc products. With the development of unique Apple McIntosh computers that boast a sleek design, the company has been able to turn it fortunes around and enjoy good market following since 2005. The Intel Macs have a unique boot camp facility that enables the users to installs windows Vista as well as XP software and use it alongside the Mac OSX (Hesseldahl 2006). This makes Product component of the marketing mix a key area of Apple Inc. the other augmented products which include the Ipod which is the market leader in portable music players as well as the smart phone –Iphone has made Apple Inc products distinctive which offers them a clear market advantage.

Place

This feature of marketing mix includes outlets where the products are distributed as well as the logistics of getting the products there for the consumers, retailers and wholesalers to reach them. Proper placement of goods can increase sales significantly which is what every producer desires. Apple Inc has its own retail stores like the Apple Retails store in Virginia, California and New York among many other outlets. This has ensured that the products of Apple Inc are available to the customers at their demand and therefore ensures that the consumers do not suffer from distributor hoarding. The high demand for the Ipod calls for a good distribution network which would also ensure that customers are assured of access to genuine products. Placement of products is therefore vital to the customer’s satisfaction.

Promotion

The factor of promotion includes all marketing efforts through which the public gets to know of the existence of the product that is being marketed (BPP 2009). The promotion strategy is to ensure that the marketing personnel take the public through the four key stages of consumer behavior namely, awareness, interest, desire and action. The apple Inc is known for their super bowl commercial that was the biggest advert of the time. Their adverts have bee trailblazing throughout with the most recent being the ‘Get a Mac’ adverts. Apple Inc fully understands the use of efficient marketing and how vital marketing is to brand success. They have therefore aggressively marketed their products through major commercials to great success. The marketing has seen the Apple Iphone gain overwhelming market reception is as far away markets as Africa and Middle East.

Price

This element of the marketing mix covers the basic prices, discounts as well as credit terms that a business offers to its customers (BPP 2009). The price is a key factor for the marketing mix as it determines how many of the consumers can afford the product on offer. It also determines the profitability of the product for the producers business. Pricing also forms an integral part of the image. If the product is wrongly priced, it might be taken to be cheap hence substandard. The pricing of the Ipod and the Iphone has set a clear distinction between them and cheap end products. This has also influenced the way most people desire to have an apple product. The pricing of the McIntosh computers has also put them within the affordable market range hence making their demand high and sustainable over a long time.

Conclusion

Apple Inc has effectively used the marketing mix to achieve good sales and sustain a good market demand. Most important to is their retail stores with most of the stores recording very high number of customers on their opening day resulting to long queues. This was appropriately captured when Sculley commented on the Guardian that Apple was more a marketing company than a technology company.

References

BPP Learning Media (2009). Marketing Management. London. BPP Publications

Pride, W., Ferrell, O.C. (2007). Foundations of Marketing: Revised Second Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Form 8-K SEC Filing (2007). Retrieved 19 November 2009. Available. http://ccbn.10kwizard.com/cgi/convert/pdf/APPLEINC8K.pdf?pdf=1&repo=tenk&ipage=4589126&num=-2&pdf=1&xml=1&cik=320193&odef=8&rid=12&quest=1&dn=2&dn=3.

Hesseldahl, A (April 5, 2006). “News Flash: Apple Introduces “Boot Camp” To Run Windows XP on Macs”. BusinessWeek. Retrieve 19 Nov 2009. Available http://www.businessweek.com/technology/ByteOfTheApple/blog/archives/2006/04/news_flash_appl.html. Retrieved 2008-08-18.

John Sculley (1997). Apple: It’s All About the Brand. The Guardian