Marketing Wk5 Assignment

This is a continuation of Week 4 Assignment. Please use Week 4 Assignment that is attached to Complete Week 5 Assignment

For this Assignment, you will continue to take on the role of a marketer for a large corporate company that currently sells high-end products or services. Your task will continue to be to assess the possibilities of selling a less expensive product/service to boost sales while maintaining the quality expectations of your consumer base. The challenge will be to not tarnish your brand while bringing in new customers that will boost sales for the company.

To complete this Assignment, you will continue to develop and present an assessment overview of a high-end brand that is planning to incorporate the possibility of selling a lower-end product or service to a new market. A big consideration is evaluating brand value. Your continued task will be to evaluate your current high-end brand and compare it to the potential new low-cost product/service and assess the real value aspect in order to make an impact on customer buying decisions and perceived value from the overall customer base, all while keeping your current customer base. Last week, you selected a company, and you will continue using that company for this week’s Assignment.

The product of your evaluation will be a report that you could deliver to the company’s CEO and senior leadership team for review. In addition to the requirements that follow, be sure to incorporate references to appropriate academic sources, such as those found in the Learning Resources, or those in the Walden Library.

Note: Last week, you submitted Parts 1 and 2. This week, you will continue building your report, to include any revisions needed to Parts 1 and 2, as well as your newly developed Part 3 and an executive summary.

To prepare for this Assignment:

· Return to the Module 2 Assignment Template you utilized in Week 4. With the research and readings from Week 4 in mind, incorporate any feedback, as needed, into your report as you complete Part 3 and the executive summary.   (Week 4 Assignment is attached)

Submit Part 3 of your report, as well as the executive summary, to include the following:

Part 3: Incorporating Market Share Capturing (approximately 2 pages)

· Summarize how market share approach can lead to consumer confidence.

· Synthesize your market share analysis for the new strategy and its impact on the organization.

· To conclude your evaluation for the CEO, defend how your market share strategies will support your overall marketing strategy for both products and capture market share for the company.

Executive Summary (page 1 of your report)

Provide the CEO with an executive summary of your evaluation of the opportunities for the brand. This will serve as the first page of your report. Be sure to address the following in your executive summary:

· Clearly state the purpose of the report.

· Concisely summarize the results of your evaluation of how the company could expand its brand to include a lower-cost version of a product/service that would retain existing customers while capturing additional market share.

Module2 Assignment:

Marketing Strategy Evaluation

Prepared by:

Date:

Walden University

WMBA 6060: Marketing for Competitiveness

Executive Summary

Replace this text with your executive summary.

Part 1: Incorporating the Marketing Mix

Apple Inc is a multinational company operating in the United States. The technological company specializes in producing high-end consumer electronics, online services, hardware, and software. According to Greg (2020), Apple is among the top four tech companies, along with Facebook, Amazon, and Google. It is best known for producing high-end products such as Macintosh, iPhone, iPad, and iPod. Apple products are more costly than products from all its competitors. Although some people believe that the company capitalizes on its brand name, its privacy policy, technological innovation such as the M1 chips, and durable and high-quality products distinguish it from its competitors.

Importance of 4Ps at Apple Inc.

According to Forbes, organizational marketing can be defined as the process by which the company communicates with its customers. The marketing mix influences the value of goods and services; price, product, place, and promotion play a crucial role in Apple’s current marketing.

Product

Apple’s product mix revolves around goods and services produced through classified information. Apple produces iPhone, Mac, wearables, iPad, digital solutions, and cloud computing. Thus, the company operates a different line of products. The consumer electronics market is the largest share and significant source of revenue, while other product mixes show that the company has also ventured into the technology and service market.

Price

Apple customers are willing to pay more for high-end products, and Apple has dynamic pricing strategies that ensure they keep their goods at high prices and attract customers. The company achieves pricing by using two strategies, premium, and freemium strategies. The premium price is the high price the company has set compared to the common price offered by competitors. The freemium strategy ensures free products and services, but customers have to pay more to unlock advanced features.

Promotion

Promotion is the most common P in the marketing mix. Apple Inc. promotes its products through communication channels such as public relations, sales promotion, personal selling, and advertising. The company advertises through print media, websites, and other advertising networks. Public relations include conducting interviews to maximize publicity, while personal relations utilize customer interactions at the stores.

Place

Place referrers to the accessibility of the product. Apple products are available at Apple Stores, the Apple website, telecommunication companies, and authorized resellers. Apple physical stores are the most visible areas where they are located for easy recognizability.

New Selling Strategies

Apple can adopt new selling strategies that will help the company sell products at favorable prices and attract more customers who currently cannot afford the goods and services offered by the company. The company should focus on creating value and not on the pricing of its items. The two selling strategies that a company can incorporate are needs-satisfaction and strategic-partnering strategies. The company can create visually captivating visuals for the customers and use appealing emotion to sell their goods. The company stands for quality; they should embrace the value and create products that drive the attention of their customers. They should also focus on product placement with celebrities and shows with high attention to create buzz among people.

Persuasion

According to Bernritter et al. (2017), persuasion plays a crucial role in customer involvement. Apple can use this technique to facilitate desired behavior in their customers, influencing them to purchase Apple products. When consumers feel they are highly involved with the company and its products, they are likelier to purchase from the company. Through persuasion, Apple Inc. will build an impulsive behavior that will increase its sales.

Part 2: Incorporating Creative Value

The business environment has become volatile and uncertain, and companies must rethink their value creation (Kurznack et al., 2021). Value has embraced value creation which has made the tech giant become recognized by its customers. Apple has become the most valued brand in the world through the production and development of its operating system, application software, hardware, and other tech services. Apple is a premium brand used by premium users across the world, the company is distinctively different from all other electronic manufacturers, and as a result, they have set a culture that meets the most significant needs of its consumers through a need-satisfaction strategy. Competitors in electronic goods such as Samsung, Google Pixel, HP, and OnePlus have failed to match Apple’s value because the company has differentiated itself from these companies creating a unique value for its consumers. This value creation and capture have created a pool of loyal customers, and the company continues to attract more customers. Therefore, the company can create lower-value products and use the same strategies to keep high-end customers and attract low-class customers who cannot afford the high-end services.

Value Creation and Value Capture

Apple’s business model accounts for the company’s value creation. Therefore, the company can appropriately shift the focus from the brand itself to the system of activities operated by its resources (Climent & Haftor, 2021). Apple’s customer value has grown significantly over the years, and brand loyalty and customer satisfaction have been vital. Apple announced iPhone SE in 2016, a low-cost Apple product with quality specifications that attracted more customers. This Apple phone attracted low-end customers and had satisfactory services enjoyed by other Apple product owners.

The company can create customer value by producing more low-end products that serve those out of reach of its products without impacting their brand. According to Forbes, Apple became the first company worth trillion in January, surpassing United Kingdom Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Since the company has created a business value beyond reach by many companies, they can diversify the production of Apple products and services to include low-cost customers. For instance, the premium figures can be divided into lite and advanced, and low-cost customers can subscribe to premium lite. In contrast, high-end customers can continue subscribing for advanced premiums. This categorization will improve the brand. Apple’s cultural values include not settling for less, the company has self-honesty, and they accept when they are wrong and improving, which has created an excellent company.

Porter’s Five Forces Theory

The porters five forces include competition in the industry, the bargaining power of the suppliers, customers’ bargaining power, a threat to substitutes, and a threat to new entrants. Apple is a consumer electronics company with numerous competitors in this business. As the company strives to achieve low-cost products, other companies such as Samsung, which have been close competitors of Apple, may sneak in. Therefore, through strategic partnering with the media and influential celebrities, the company will manage to keep its competition low while providing less-expensive goods. Secondly, the threat of new entrants depends on the company; however, by creating goods that meet customer needs, the company will continue being a threat to new entrants because of the loyal customer base. Apple has a large number of suppliers who help in the production of Apple products and parts for assembling. Since the supplier does not want to lose business, they will help the company produce low-cost processors and other parts required in production. An example is using a cheaper chip to produce low-end products which are less expensive to ensure customers with high-end products do not switch to low-end products or move to competitors. Apple is not affected by customers’ bargaining power; if the changes lead to a few clients switching to other companies while Apple acquires a large pool of low-end customers, the company will not feel the impact in revenue because it will grow. Lastly, substitute products such as Android are a great challenge to Apple. However, customers using iOS or macOS are likely to stick to these operating systems because they are unique, giving Apple an upper hand. After all, competitors must acquire patent rights to use iOS or macOS on their products.

Part 3: Incorporating Market Share Capturing

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References

Apple Becomes 1st Company Worth $3 Trillion—Greater Than The GDP Of The UK. https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharysmith/2022/01/03/apple-becomes-1st-company-worth-3-trillion-greater-than-the-gdp-of-the-uk/?sh=55aede4b5603

Bernritter, S. F., van Ooijen, I., & Müller, B. C. (2017). Self-persuasion as marketing technique: the role of consumers’ involvement. European Journal of Marketing. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-04-2015-0213

Climent, R. C., & Haftor, D. M. (2021). Value creation through the evolution of business model themes. Journal of Business Research, 122, 353-361. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.09.007

Dawar, N., & Bendle, N. (2018). Marketing in the age of Alexa. Harvard Business Review, 96(3), 80-86.

Evolution Of the Four Ps: Revisiting the Marketing Mix. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/01/03/evolution-of-the-four-ps-revisiting-the-marketing-mix/?sh=51195c0b1120

Greg, R. (2020). Strategic Review on Apple Inc Marketing in the United States of America. Journal of Marketing and Communication, 3(2). https://stratfordjournals.org/journals/index.php/journal-of-marketing/article/view/725

Kurznack, L., Schoenmaker, D., & Schramade, W. (2021). A model of long-term value creation. Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/20430795.2021.1920231

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