Building a Brand: Apple Inc Case Study

Apple Computer uses focused differentiation to help sell its computers to a narrow target market of graphic designers and educators rather than the general population of computer users. Apple’s innovation on the ITunes store together with the widespread use of the IPod. The corporate strategy is focused on being a market disrupter, and in turn a market maker, by focusing relentlessly on the customer experience.

Apple’s position and marketing as a premium brand is based on their strategy of not competing on price. Apple operates on premium pricing and price skimming. Premium pricing is a strategy in stitch products are introduced and kept at high prices in order to encourage a level of exclusivity and luxury among consumers. The high prices of Apple products, in comparison to their competitors, is reflective and representative of the quality and exclusivity of their products. Through this pricing strategy, Apple has successfully build a brand equity and value around their brand and products which in result means consumers are willing to pay the extra amount of money for their products, instead of going to competitors with lower prices.

The brand identity can used to drive and guide strategic initiatives throughout the firm, to differentiate the firm’s products and create a competitive advantage, to drive the committed to customer, to support the firm’s values and culture, and to support an easier protection of the brand (Danciu, 2010). Apple’s good brand identity strategy has provided supports to its unique position and its products in the global market. Apple has ranks as the top ‘Luxury Brand’ in China and many people are desired to own the products of Apple due to its luxury identity (Kedmey, 2015). Even though Apple has charge high prices for its products to customers, but customers are willing to buy as it provide innovative and better quality of products in terms of privacy, systems, application, and functions which easy to win the customer’s respect and loyalty. The distribution and retail strategy of Apple made it successful (Denning, 2011). There are four main distribution channels for Apple of its products, which are an online store, its retail store, direct sales, and third party wholesalers, which are easy to distribute its products to consumer. The store of Apple is intensive to control the ways that employees interact with customers, scripted training for on-site tech support, and consideration of every store detail down to the pre-loaded photos and music on demo devices. It also creates a carefree and

Apple is an American multinational technology company that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. Their best-known hardware products are the Mac computers, the iPod, the iPhone smartphone, and the iPad tablet computers. They represent a form of change in this time period, not only because they look good but also because they represent a symbol of social status. Although, they are other products out there, consumers would choose Apple products because they seem more valuable and also due to the fact that they have much more to offer. In our era, Appearances could also play a huge role in choosing the products people buy referring to technology. For example, Apple uses sleek, slim and edgy designs to attract their buyers. Even though some people uses other products, Apple gadgets stand out the

In 1997, what is now arguably the most recognized brand name, was caught in a downward spiral further fueled by a rapidly maturing rival. In an effort to stem the hemorrhaging, the flailing company had cycled through one Chief Executive Officer to the next, but yet continued to lose market share and profitability. It was not until the return of a high-profile alumnus did said company reverse course and ascend to technological supremacy, drastically altering the consumer culture landscape along the way. Steve Jobs, in assuming Apple’s reins in 1997, armed with vision, a new strategy, and an implementation plan, shepherded the fabled technological turnaround of the

Apple implemented the marketing concept by focusing on customers’ needs through imagination, design, and innovation creating an emotional brand for its customers. Even though Apple is a technological company it takes a humanistic approach to satisfying the needs of its customers far better than the competition.

It is arguable that without the price-premium, which the Apple brand sustains in many product areas, the company would have exited the personal computer business several years ago. Small market share PC vendors with weaker brand equity have struggled to compete with the supply chain and manufacturing economics of Dell. Apple has made big advances in becoming more efficient, particularly in logistics and operations, but it was difficult to make a profit at the price levels Dell transacts. ("Apple," 2008). From a brand architecture viewpoint, the company maintains a "monolithic" brand identity - everything being associated with the Apple name, even when investing strongly in the Apple iPod and Apple iTunes products. Apple's current line-up of product families includes not just the iPod and iTunes, but iMac, iBook, iLife, iWork, and now iPhone. However, even though marketing investments around iPod are substantial, Apple has not established an "i" brand.

Apple Inc. has prided itself on product innovation since the company was first founded. Apple's recent breakthroughs were a result of a new technologies convergence upon the "digital hub" strategy that has been in play for many years now (Mortensen, 2010). This strategy represents the core of Apple's success over the last several years. In fact, it was this strategy that ultimately led to the development such as the iPad, iPod, and iPhone. Furthermore, Apple has also carved out a unique market niche by creating products with innovative and user friendly designs. The combinations of these factors have created some of the most loyal customers in the entire business world.

This paper is an attempt to study Brand Apple and the extraordinary devotion and brand loyalty portrayed and practiced by the Apple Tribe – consumers of the brand that purchase, obsess, follow and identify with the brand wholeheartedly. Reported as one of the most participatory brands, Apple is carried forth into the future with extreme dedication so much so that it’s brand success remains unprecedentedly high and blooming, making it a brand success story to remember. This paper is an attempt to bring light to not the brand itself so much as the tribe - the brand loyalty bandwagon and what drives consumers to swear allegiance to a tech company, in the digital era where no one can predict the source for the next game changing technological innovation.

As Apple Inc is a global company with strong investors and ever receptive market, there are many ways for the company to produce their items and sell their brand. Growth strategies aim to increase market sales. A high market growth rate is essential as assessing it directs business and marketing efforts. Companies experiencing low sales growth relative to their competitors must determine the potential causes of their performance issues. Besides, it is an indicator on market growth, signalling the sustainability of your business in the long term. While a high growth rate indicates low saturation and high demand, a negative rate could suggest that consumers are losing interest in your product or service. Financial institutions, will utilize this

The topic of this paper is the future of Apple and their increasing technology, their competition and life without Steve Jobs. Apple continues to keep consumers interest peaked because of their innovativeness. The company is quite dedicated to keeping their name before consumers. The company is definitely not afraid of over exposure. Apple keeps consumers anticipating the next innovative technological product. Apple implores niche marketing which according to our text all the organization tore create more narrowly focused marketing plans. (Finch, 2012) This company is worth more that top running companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. (Carr, 2013)

In terms of revenue, Apple is the second largest technology-based company in the world. This is due to their innovative technology, unique designs, creative features, and their successfully implemented marketing strategies for each of their products (Apple Inc, 2013). Perhaps more importantly, Apple is where it is today due to customer loyalty. Since Apple’s

2． Powerful brand image associated with quality and superior hardware design: Apple continues to innovate in the area of hardware design. Some innovations are:their own A-series chips for iDevices: Where others use general purpose ARM based integrated circuit chips to drive their devices, each A-series chip is designed specifically for the devices it is to power, designed explicitly to meet Apple’s specific requirements; the unibody design for the laptops: provides a lighter, stronger case for the MacBooks; the multi-touch track pad on the laptops: was new & innovative; the magnetic charger connection on the MacBooks; all the iDevices: the build quality is surpassed by no other; The newest iPhone 5 is regarded as a gold standard in terms of its durability as well as the iOS. In each of these examples, hardware design – aesthetics aside – is always of high quality, and uses the latest technology that is ready.

“Marketing is about values. It’s a complicated and noisy world, and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us.”(Steve Jobs)

Apple has a very strong and well recognised brand. All of Apple’s products have a very high level of brand awareness and are recognised in all of the markets in which it operates. The evidence of this high brand recognition and awareness can be found by taking a look at the at the sales figure and revenue that Apple generates, For example, the iPad managed to gross in about $5 billion and unit sales of about 7.5 million in 2010, going on to sell a further 7.33 million units in the first quarter of 2011. Another example is the 93% rise in the net sales of the iPhone to generate revenue of about $25.2 billion in the year 2010. Apple’s brand recognition and awareness enables the company to set