Positioning:
It is widely recognized that Apple is a premium brand that demands and earns a price premium. This price premium spans the entire Apple product lineup encompassing the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, software, and accessories. Apple's positioning is aligned with targeting a less price sensitive customer. As a result, Apple's culture and internal activities are structured to meet the needs of these customers, strategists call this needs-based positioning. Apple has thus created a culture and a set of activities to differentiate itself from rivals in order to meet the needs of their target customers.
Market Segmentation:
The market segmentation includes:
Demographical bases.
Geographical bases.
Behavior bases.
Psychographic bases.
1 Demographical bases (age, family size, life cycle, occupation)
Looking into Apple, the Demographical market segment is successful because they are developing products on the age, life cycle, occupation of the people. They are distributing their products into various places and the PCs are categorized on age, family size, for example they would have more games and entertainment in the PCs for the kids and a professional PC with all the latest software's.
2 Geographical bases (states, regions, countries)
Looking into the geographical bases of Apple they have established their business all over the world like U.S., South America, Europe, Japan, and Australia.
Recently Apple chose to implement a vertical growth strategy and began expanding their own retail stores. The company also sells its product via third-parties dealers, or via internet through their own website or through the iTunes online music stores.
3 Behavior bases (product knowledge, usage, attitudes, and responses)
In this market segment Apple providing good product knowledge to the customers by advertizing on search engines, T.V. as they have a very good brand image. Using this brand image they are continuously coming up with new ideas and products and attracting the customers. Apple has got a very good response rate as many of the customers are looking for new designs and innovative products which Apple is successfully delivering.
Competition:
Apple makes a wide variety of products that penetrate many different markets. When it comes to smartphones, perhaps Samsung is its biggest competitor. Apple may not have any close competitors in the tablet market, but perhaps Google or Microsoft qualify as potential threats to Apple's dominance. But as emphasised here on smartphones we will see how Apple deals with it's biggest competitors Samsung.
Google might be considered an Apple competitor on multiple fronts. Google offers the Google Drive cloud service, which could be considered a competitor to Apple’s iCloud.
PCs are differentiated as hardware / software configurations. Competition is mainly based one cost. The main competitor for Apple when it comes to PCs is Microsoft. Microsoft also has their own operating system but is providing it to the customers in a very cheap price when compared to Apple. Hence it can be said that there is a fierce price competition.
Points of Parity:
While sharing many similarities (points-of-parity PoP) such as both being smartphones having basic features such as video and music players, Apple attracts users by its easy-to-use instinctive system, the basic functionality of iTunes and its simple sleek design whereas Samsung boasts the highest resolution rates in the market as of now, higher customize ability for the tech-savvy and a more sophisticated design.
Points of difference:
Apple's POD focuses on the emotions. The starting point is how an Apple product experience makes you feel. The Apple brand personality is about lifestyle; imagination; liberty regained; innovation; passion; hopes, dreams and aspirations; and power-to-the-people through technology.
It also is about simplicity and the removal of complexity from people's lives; people-driven product design; and about being a really humanistic company with a heartfelt connection with its customers.
Recommendation:
Apple’s marketing genius has fallen far from the tree, losing its lustre just as the company’s iconic image has dimmed in an aggressively competitive marketplace. Specially after the death of Steve Jobs they are losing track and facing dilemmas for creating appropriate advertising strategies. So it needs to be improved.
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