Introduction
Marketing is an important component of any company. It is through marketing that sales are increased and the brand of the company is promoted. It is also through marketing that the products of company are known. This paper will look at the marketing strategy of Apple Company. Apple Company is a computer company that has been a major brand in the computing field.
Target market
One of the target markets of the company includes consumers and SMEs. These are people who use the products for small businesses and individual purposes. The company also targets education sector. The company targets both the students and university institution. The company also targets to provide solutions to programs that have been rolled out in schools and colleges. There are programs like giving laptops to students in lower grade classes. Another target group is government, enterprises, institutions. These are entities that need their computers for powerful computing needs (Pride, & Ferrell, 2011).
Marketing mix
Product – Apple Company has many products like portable computers, servers, accessories iTunes, iPhones products that are used in the peripheral. The products use the latest trends in technology and are different from one another.
Price – the price for the company is not a key strategy that they use in the fight of the competition. Because of the brand which is well known, the price is not taken to mean a lot. The pricing of the products will depend on the technology that has been used and the effectiveness of these products.
Promotion – there are many packages that the company uses to market and promote their products. There are many discounts that are offered by the company in order to gain more potential. There is also one year warranty that is offered by the company when they sell their products.
Place – the company is headquartered in California but have an online service consultant who are available to help when the need arises.
People – There are people from senior management to the software engineers who work together with one vision for the company. There is mutual understanding of the different people working in the company.
Distribution strategy – the company makes use of the online retailers like Amazon, their stores which are available in different countries. There are also sales in their headquarters.
Apple’s marketing plan
Long-term goal - The Apple Company has the long-term goal of working in a group across the whole world with the aim of enhancing the technological products that they offer in the world. Another objective of the company is to reduce the price of the products by eradicating the presence of middle-men. They also hope to plan and develop their own computer accessories like printers and projectors (Boone, 2012).
Short-term goal – the short term goal of the company is to extend the production of their products in the whole world so that they can cover such sectors as telecommunication, personal computers and products which are oriented towards technology.
Customer trends
With the changes in customer trends, there is the change of the trends and strategies that are used by the company in their business. One of the changes that are seen is where customers prefer having the management of their digital content by one manager. This is the reason why the company introduced iCloud which is a strategy where the contacts of Apple customers can be stored in the cloud developed by Apple. Customers prefer having their digital content like email contacts and storage, phone contacts, and other media being managed by one company. This will make it easy to manage compatibility. That is why it is now common to find Google offering Chrome which is used by Gmail users, and HTC phone users. It makes synchronization easy. This is a strategy that Apple has not mastered well enough.
Marketing problems and opportunities
There are marketing opportunities that are faced by the company. One of the opportunities is making relations with other companies so that the company can have long survival in the market. One problem that is faced by the company is that of pricing of their prices. They are known to be very expensive.
References
Boone, L. E. (2012). Contemporary marketing. New York: Cengage Learning.
Pride, W. M., & Ferrell, O. C. (2011). Marketing. New York: Cengage Learning.
