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Apple and Marketing Positioning Essay

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Marketers manage product positioning by focusing their marketing activities on a positioning strategy. This essay will discuss the multiple factors that are crucial to optimal market positioning. The factors that impact the chosen organisation, Apple, and the chosen product, laptop computers, include market segmentation, market positioning, and the marketing mix, which comprises price, promotion, place and product.

Established in the United States of America in April 1976, Apple Inc is a multinational corporation that designs and manufactures consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include Mac computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. As at January 2010 the company …show more content…

Usually smaller brands single out the leader and attack them, not one brand positioning themselves against the whole category.

For Apple to effectively position its laptop computers in the market it must formulate an effective marketing mix. The marketing mix is defined by Kotler et al (2008, p.106) as “the set of controllable marketing variables that the company blends to produce the response it wants in the target market.” The marketing mix comprises of the “four P’s”- product, price, promotion and place.

Kotler et al (2008, p.57) define product as a “goods-and-service combination the company offers to a target market”. The satisfaction and value perceieved by the consumer is dependant on whether these attributes are satisfied, or exceeded. To achieve optimal market positioning, all product attributes for Apple’s target market, tangible and intangible, must be recognised in conjunction with their weighted importance. Product attributes considered important by Apple’s target market are seen to be: competitive pricing, range, functionality, information provided, friendly service, quality assurance and added value.

The time necessary to learn about a product or service and to travel to purchase it, as well as time spent in a store, can be important costs to the consumer. From a consumer’s point of view, price is usually defined as what the consumer must give up to purchase a

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