Introduction
The success of any organization’s brand depends significantly on the quality of marketing strategies employed. This implies that each marketing decision made by managers regarding the company’s brand is crucial. This paper presents a critical analysis of the state of apple’s brand after Steve’s death, the strategies that can be employed to prevent the brand from falling and the expected future state of the company.
Apple’s Brand in the absence of Steve Jobs
According to Burrows and Satariano (2012), it is very precise that Apple’s brand is facing a significant danger following the death of its co-founder, Steve Jobs. This argument is based on a number of criticism and evidence from various studies. For instance, after the death of Steve Jobs, a number of criticisms against the company’s approve process have emerged. Evidence reveals that Phil Schiller’s restrictions have lengthen the process approving the company’s applications developers. Moreover, evidenced from the company’s four former managers asserts that Phil Schiller lacks the bold creative instincts that form the key ingredients in stabilizing Apple’s age (Burrows & Satariano, 2012). Phil Schiller’s role in marketing has also been questioned. In contrary to what Steve believed in, there is an alarming fear that Schiller’s leadership may become more conventional, vulnerable to hyping products in a manner, which may blemish Apple’s brand loyalty. Evidence further indicates that after the death of Steve, celebrity endorsements have significantly declined. During Steve’s reign, Apple’s advertisement surrendered a string of unforgettable celebrity endorsement campaigns, which helped to increase the acceptance of products such as “Mac vs. PC” ads and ipod dancers.
Strategies to Prevent Apple from going down
In order to prevent Apple’s brand from going down, it is vital for the company to utilize a combination of porter’s generic strategies and market segmentation strategies. Ideally, the application’s Michael Porter’s generic strategies will help the company to gain a competitive edge over its rivals such as Microsoft. Precisely, Apple should apply four key generic strategies. First, the company should employ cost leadership strategy by increasing efficiency and effectiveness of its processes. This strategy will tend to minimize the company’s average costs, thus enabling it to offers products to its customers at low prices without compromising its profit margins. However, for this strategy to be successful, Apple’s products must be standardized. Second, Apple needs to adopt a differentiation strategy by developing products that are unique and different from those of its competitors (Porter, 2008).
However, although different they may be, the differentiated products must match with the customer’s value and expectations. Another potential generic strategy that may be appealing to the company is the focus strategy. Here, there is need for the company to focus on a particular market niche, product line, geographical area, or customer. Finally, apple needs to adopt an alliance strategy (Porter, 2008). In this case, the company needs to work in partnerships with its key suppliers, distributors, and even its rivals. Besides enjoying a stable value chain system, evidence reveals that formation of alliances will enable a company to buy in bulk and consequently enjoy benefits arising from economies of scale.
In order for Apple to serve it target market effectively, the company should divide its market based on a wide range of market segmentation strategies. For instance, the company can apply psychographic segmentation; segment its target customer based on their lifestyles, interest, attitudes, values, opinions, and how these factors affect their purchase of Apple’s products. Geographical segmentation is equally a valuable strategy to adopt. In this case, Apple can divide its customers according to their home continents, countries, counties, regions, climate, among other. Moreover, Apple’s market may be segmented through demographic segmentation (Lamb et al., 2011). This will entail dividing up customers according to their level of income, education, gender, age, occupation, religion, culture, nationality, and language. This is crucial in developing customized products. Finally, behavioral segmentation may be used to partition Apple’s market according to the needs of customers and their reaction to those needs; say how frequent they purchase iPhones.
The future of Apple Inc
In spite of Apple’s current brand vulnerability to jeopardy, there is a significant optimism about the company’s success future. The company’s future success is likely to be experienced in some its key products such as iPhone and iPad, primarily due innovations, which are expected to reduce the prices of these product lines. In addition, if appropriate changes are going to be instituted to the company’s marketing strategy such as increasing celebrity endorsement advertisement campaigns, the company’s future may be bright.
References
Burrows, P., & Satariano, A. (2012). "Can Phil Schiller keep Apple cool" Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved from http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-06-07/can-phil-schiller-keep-apple-cool#p2
Lamb, C. W., Hair, J. F., & McDaniel, C. D. (2011). Essentials of marketing. Mason, Ohio: South-Western Cengage Learning.
Porter, M. (2008). Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. New York: Simon and Schuster.
