International Marketing of Apple Inc.

Requirement

International Marketing

Solution

Introduction

Apple is considered as a famous international brand which is launched by an organization known as Apple Inc. It is known as a popular multinational American technology organization which is known for quality and creativity of its products. Headquarters of Apple is situated in Cupertino, California. It was launched during 1976 to deal with high quality and innovative products. Apple especially deals in digital music players, market media, personal computers, mobile communication devices, portable digital music players and also deals with a different range of software, third-party digital contents, peripherals applications, networking solutions and different services. Apple Inc. is operating its business in almost every country through its retail stores, direct sales force, online stores and third-party cellular network. Apart from all these products the organization mainly produce iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and iPod. This makes the organization very successful in among existing market. The quality of its products is very high due to which it charge high prices to its target customers. High prices of products enable the organization to gain more and more profit. In this paper, we will discuss the Apple brand and analyze its different marketing mix strategy aspects to find their suitability. This will help the organization to keep competitive and gain high profit its existing marketplace.

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Marketing Mix Analysis 

Marketing Mix for Apple Inc. indicates how the organization matches its different business activities to the existing conditions of the market. This will help the organization in knowing about how to efficiently utilize different market conditions and competitive landscape through effective distribution, pricing, products, and promotion (Schultz, 2012). Standardization and adaptation analysis of Apple product are following:

Product
Apple is performing various efforts to enhance the size of its product mix. This part of marketing mix define the outputs of the organization processes. Apple is especially dealing with Apple TV, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Software, and iPod. The quality of these products makes it different from the other existing competitors like Samsung in the existing market. It can be said that product concept, packet, and color, brand name and label of Apple products are standardized in international markets (Akgün, 2014). Color and features of the product are different as per the difference in countries. Thus, it can be said that the organization adopted its product mix on the basis of distributive costs, customer preferences, and market properties. Apart of this, brand name and label of the organization is considered standardized. It is because the organization needs to establish brand equity and brand recognition in the international markets. On the basis of its brand, it able to create its image in the eyes of customers and they will become brand loyal. Policies applied by the organization during formulating market fix is shown in below: 

  • Product Mix

  • Color

  • Brand Name

  • Product Concept

  • Packet

  • Label

  • Strategy

  • Adaptation

  • Standardization

  • Adaptation

  • Adaptation

  • Standardization

  • Main reason

  • Customer preferences, Market characteristics

  • Brand Equity and Brand Recognition

  • Customer preferences, Market characteristics, and Distributive costs

  • Customer preferences, Market characteristics

  • Brand Equity and Brand Recognition

Price
Apple mainly utilizes the premium price strategy which enables the organization to charge high prices for its products. In this part of the marketing mix the organization mainly focuses on how prices of the organization represent the organization and its product in the international market. The premium strategy of the organization enables it to maintain its competitive advantage in the existing market. The organization declared that it pay high money for advertising in the domestic company than the costs in the international market. The organization needs to spend less money on the global market because advertisements of products done by different customer stores. This will save the extra advertisement cost of the organization. Pricing strategy utilizes by the organization is premium pricing. The most determinant stage of this pricing policy is premium. The prices of Apple products are too higher than its competitors. This will have both adverse and positive impact on the competitive position of the market. The marketing mix adaptation and standardization causes of the organization are following:

  • Adaptation

  • Sales volume and profits can enhance due to different markets

  • Lack of control due to availability of market differentiated pricing

  • Poor image of multi-national firms

  • Standardization 

  • Low-risk strategy as a fixed result is guaranteed

  • Best image of multi-national firms

  • Lots of effort is made to maximize sales and profit volume because they set the high price for all market

  • Utilized when selling highly specialized manufacturing plant

Promotion
The marketing mix of Apple includes various promotion activities that concentrate on the quality and premium image of the organization products. The marketing communications and promotion mix enables the organization in reaching more potential buyers. Promotion marketing mix of Apple mainly includes advertising, public relations, sales promotion, and personal selling. It can be said that promotion activities of the organization mainly concentrated corporate customers because it reaches to potential customers through corporate customers in the international market (De Mooij, 2013). Customer stores of the organization mainly done advertisement through commercial films recorded in Turkey. Apart of it, the main promotion tool on which the organization focuses largely is international expositions, advertisements, and customer visits. The main causes of standardization and adaptation in promotion activities of Apple are following:

  • Culture

  • Customer characteristics

  • Law Legislation

  • The nature of the market

  • Nature of product

Utilization of appropriate promotion strategy helps the organization in reaching to more and more customers in a small time period. Through this, the organization can enhance its popularity and can easily expand its market in international countries as well as the domestic country.

Place
Marketing mix of Apple contains a holistic approach to distribution, taking benefits of various distribution channels. It can be said the organization utilizes a selective strategy of distribution, which involves some degree of exclusivity that could limit market reach. Apple mainly transmitted its products directly to the foreign markets without any intermediary. It is done because the organization can easily put a control on its marketing activities. As per the viewpoint of Apple, distribution is affected by the legal regulations and nature of an international market (Chung, 2012). Apple delivers its products with euro pallet in some countries such as Germany. Apart of it, the organization also utilize CIF and Exwork methods to deliver its products in international markets. Effective promotion of the products enables the organization to enhance its sales level in the domestic market as well as international market. The main causes of adaptation and standardization for the organization is following:

  • Adaptation

  • Cultural Differences

  • Different environmental factors like legal and political constraints

  • Customer Satisfaction level

  • Standardization

  • Saving costs and improving efficiency

  • Enhancing image of the organization

  • Enhancing level of customer’s loyalty and trust

  • Globalization trend

  • Internationalization Process Theory 

The born-global concept is the concept in which the organization seeks to deprive competitive edge of the optimum utilization of resources and by selling the output in various countries. The global firms are the ones which are originated internationally, and they further explore the foreign market. The advantages of the born-global concept are that it helps in improving the product's quality and helps in gaining the advantage of the first mover and moreover it is convenient to adopt because of the advanced technology. The only drawback is that it require more capital. The Uppsala model was established in 1977, and the model tries to demonstrate the incremental and slow process of the internationalization of the firms which struggle for growth and the profit for long term period and also tries to minimize the risk at the same time (Sasi, 2015). Mainly, the model talks about the integration, usage of knowledge and acquisition of the foreign market and its operations. The model has various drawbacks like the organization which have great resources and are expected to take high risks towards internationalization. And the advantage is that when the conditions of the foreign market are stable, then the learning becomes easy about them. The another theory is international product life cycle model envisages the process of internationalization in order to be a systematic, predictable and incremental sequence and the entry form into the foreign markets relies on the life stage of products (Lau, 2013). The drawback of the theory is that it can lead to the over emphasis on the releases of the new products. The theory is only appropriate for the products which are technology based. The advantage of this theory is that it helps the firms in the planning process and it also helps the organizations to take the proactive approach.
Therefore, the theory of born-global concept is most suitable as it has more advantages and fewer drawbacks as compared to other theories.

Conclusion

The above study is related to a contribution towards international marketing by measuring marketing mix activities in an international organization context. This study mainly measured the different marketing mix activities with adaptation or standardization of marketing mix strategy. After studying all this, it can be concluded that Apple can significantly position itself by focusing more on an expansion of its current marketing mix (Hallbäck, 2013). Innovativeness and quality of its product enable it to place itself at the top of the market. International process theories give the way through which it can efficiently examine its different marketing mix activities. It is necessary for the organization to study the adaptation and standardization of its marketing mix activities. This will facilitate the organization in gaining competitive image in the international market.

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References

  • Akgün, A., Keskin, H., & Ayar, H., 2014. Standardization and Adaptation of International Marketing Mix Activities: A Case Study. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042814051295

  • Schultz, D.E. and Dev, C., 2012. Revisiting the Marketing Mix: The Apple Store experience typifies a new vision for marketing. American Marketing Association, Marketing Management Magazine.

  • Chung, H.F., Lu Wang, C. and Huang, P.H., 2012. A contingency approach to international marketing strategy and decision-making structure among exporting firms. International Marketing Review, 29(1), pp.54-87.

  • De Mooij, M., 2013. Global marketing and advertising: Understanding cultural paradoxes. Sage Publications.

  • Hallbäck, J. and Gabrielsson, P., 2013. Entrepreneurial marketing strategies during the growth of international new ventures originating in small and open economies. International Business Review, 22(6), pp.1008-1020.

  • Sasi, V., Sperling, G. and Arenius, P., 2015, January. RAPID INTERNATIONALIZATION of BORN GLOBAL FIRMS-do LOCAL NETWORKS have an IMPACT. In ICSB World Conference Proceedings (p. 1). International Council for Small business (ICSB).

  • Lau, H.F., 2013. Internationalization, Internalization, or a New Theory for Small, Low?technology Multinational Enterprise?. Asia Pacific International Journal of Marketing.

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