Reviving Market Dominance: A Marketing Plan For Apple

Apple’s Growth and Success

Discuss about the Marketing Plan for Apple Incorporation.

Apple incorporation was founded in the year 1977 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniac at the back of a garage. Ever since, in the last 42 years that company has grown from 2 member company to 123,000 people company spawning a revenue of USD 229.34 Billion in the year 2017(Laszlo, 2017). Apple success mantra is guided by constant product and business innovation, the company has been riding high on the success due to its persistent innovation and its ability to always exceed the customer expectations (Wagner & Hollenbeck, 2014). The company however during 70s and early 80s was not doing well as was expected from it, John Sculley, then CEO of Apple was not comfortable working with the founder Steve Jobs, and hence the board throw Jobs out of the company in 1985. Further, Steve Jobs went ahead with his quest for technology by inventing a company called next and creating 1^st animated film, Apple continued to fall beyond control. In the year 1997, the Prodigal son, Steve Jobs was hired back and the Tech enthusiast made Apple as the world’s biggest technology company (West, Ford & Ibrahim, 2015).

The purpose of the assignment here is to create a marketing plan for Apple to revive its market dominance and have a competitive edge against its biggest competitor IBM.

Apple was doing phenomenal due to the sales of its Apple 2 product, riding high on the success, Steve jobs decided to introduce a far superior Personal computer in the market. Macintosh was expected to change the personal computing ecosystem across the world, the product was highly appreciated by the critics and tech zealots, but the product failed to impress its customers due to its high pricing and inability of people to understand the utility of such high priced device (Bicen & Johnson, 2016).  The situation in Apple way back in 1985 was not favourable, there were constant power struggle, and the employees working directly under Steve jobs were unsatisfied because of his unorthodox leadership style. Thus, Steve job was thrown out of his own company in 1985(Rothaermel, 2016).

Apple failed during the period of 1977 and 1985 due to the following reasons:

Steve Jobs wanted Apple to be at the helm of technological revolution, he was determined that the company can reach its goal by persistent innovation in its products. Steve Jobs was focussed highly on beating IBM out of the competition and coming up with its own software which would put Microsoft and IBM gives a run for their money (Yoffie & Cusumano, 2015). In this consistent fight, Apple and Steve jobs made quite a few mistakes which lead to company’s failure, some of the biggest mistakes were:

• Steve Jobs created his own team to design Macintosh; it was like a company inside a company. This did not go down well with the board of Apple; Steve Jobs was recklessly pushing its employees to work on the deadline which lead to employee dissatisfaction eventually leading to high turnover rates for Apple (Laamanen, Lamberg & Vaara, 2016).
• High marketing, engineering and production cost was eating up the revenues of Apple (Shin, Park & Lee, 2015).
• John Sculley and Steve Jobs were at loggerheads because of constant power tussle and lack of same technological insight for the company (Saxena, 2014).
• Apple was so much busy in defeating IMB that it lost its product and marketing strategy (Northouse, 2018).
• People were highly confused regarding the functionalities of the product and according to their perception it was not value for money product (Kane, 2015).
• Macintosh got into the market with some great reviews but disappointing sales lead to the company eating away the profits of Apple 1 and 2.
• Failed advertising strategy.
• Product cannibalization
• Criticism for unethical business practices
• Dubious tax tactics
• Insufficient data securities

All these failures point that Apple was not focussed and failed at understanding the PC market.

Before creating a marketing plan it is essential to understand the marketing demographics for Apple and PC market. People who are the potential buyers of Apple product form its target group.

The Story Behind Apple’s Failure and Success

The process of segmentation is dividing the population into group according to their characteristic behaviour as a strategy to sell the products. The set of characteristic identified for Apple product are:

• People who appreciate superior quality design.
• People appreciating the high performance from a PC
• People who prefer value for money (Its earlier strategy was services over price, but Macintosh failure proved it wrong)

Based on Apple’s highly innovative product, the company’s positioning is that of a premium brand providing superior quality products at a premium. Based on the above understanding the Segmentation, targeting and Positioning of Apple can be drawn as:

Back in 1970 to 1997, digital revolution has not kicked in; it was the traditional media which was supremely responsible for higher sales of product. Apple, marketing strategy was quite distorted, the new advertising plan of Apple could have been:

Newspaper Articles- Apple can use the power of newspapers to increase the awareness and penetration of its Apple 2 and Macintosh products. The products were differentiated in the mind of Apple designed but for the general public, they appeared quite the same. Apple thus, by publishing paid articles can create differentiation and utility of each device separately to cater to different market segments.

Magazines- A number of magazines such as Time, Forbes and Fortune were dominating the business world. Apple strategy could have been to leverage these high profile magazine publications to lure its customer audience. The people who were subscribers of such magazines were big time influencers and business people, these people could easily became brand advocate of Apple’s product and increased its sales.

Radio Ads- Promotion of Apple’s product on radio, highlighting the USP would have been very useful.

TV advertisement- Apple has been known to create great advertisement for its consumer audience. The company can promote the product in line with its technical offering and superiority with its competitors. Creation of ads showcasing the personal computer being used in families and offices citing all the useful features would settle down in the minds of its customers.

Personal Selling- The target audience of Apple products were tech enthusiasts and people who are looking for high performance and superior quality in the product as value proposition. The same can be ensured by personal selling of device to big corporates and individuals through its stores.

Billboards- Billboards are costly, but good placement of bill boards can help the company in achieving envisioned results. Apple can use the high rise building, Wall Street and big streets to place its billboards across the states. It leads to high brand awareness and constant product reminder, which can help in increasing the sales of Apple product

Marketing mix can be understood as a fundamental tool which helps the firm to pursue its marketing objectives in the targeting market. The 4P of marketing is called as the marketing mix which helps in determining the strategic direction for the company.

The marketing mix would ensure that the company’s strategic direction is not only to make profits, but to take the company to the path of consistent innovation to improve the lives of its customers.

Conclusion

Apple was founded in the year 1976 by Steve Jobs, the company was on a mission to dethrone the existing industry leaders and create products which are highly beneficial to the customers. Steve jobs was thrown out of his own company due to a power tussle with the management and other such issues. The company completely lost the track of its progress and hit a grey ground. Understanding the target market, their aspiration and change in the pricing strategy could have helped the company in preventing the failure. The company should have focussed on differentiating its product from the market and creating utility of the product in the mind-set of consumers to reverse its already written fate.

References

Bicen, P. and Johnson, W.H., 2016. Competitive Advantage: Relevancy to the Malaysian Economy. Rethinking Innovation: Global Perspectives, 22.

Kane, Y. I. (2015). Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs. Harper Business.

Laamanen, T., Lamberg, J. A., & Vaara, E. (2016). Explanations of success and failure in management learning: What can we learn from Nokia’s rise and fall?. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 15(1), 2-25.

Laszlo, C (2017). Embedded sustainability: The next big competitive advantage. Routledge.

Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.

Rothaermel, F. T. (2016). Competitive advantage in technology intensive industries. In Technological innovation: Generating economic results (pp. 233-256). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Saxena, S. (2014). What Would Steve Jobs Do?-How the Steve Jobs Way Can Inspire Anyone to Think Differently and Win. South Asian Journal of Management, 21(1), 181.

Shin, J., Park, Y., & Lee, D. (2015). Google TV or Apple TV?—The Reasons for Smart TV Failure and a User-Centered Strategy for the Success of Smart TV. Sustainability, 7(12), 15955-15966.

Wagner J. A., & Hollenbeck, J. R. (2014). Organizational behavior: Securing competitive advantage. Routledge.

West, D. C., Ford, J., & Ibrahim, E. (2015). Strategic marketing: creating competitive advantage. Oxford University Press, USA.

Yoffie, D.B. and Cusumano, M.A., 2015. Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs. HarperBusiness.

Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:

Turnitin Report

Formatting

Title Page

Citation

Outline

Place an Order