Marketing Management of Apple

This article discusses the marketing environment and marketing mix strategies of Apple Inc., a leading brand in the technology industry. It analyzes the macro and micro environment factors, including political and technological factors, as well as the four P's of marketing - product, price, place, and promotion. The article concludes with recommendations for Apple to expand its customer segment and focus on advertising to maintain its brand image.

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Marketing Management of Apple
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction..............................................................................................................................2
2. Marketing Environment...........................................................................................................2
2.1 Macro environment...........................................................................................................2
2.2 Micro environment............................................................................................................4
3. Four P’s....................................................................................................................................6
3.1 Price..................................................................................................................................6
3.2 Product..............................................................................................................................6
3.3 Promotion..........................................................................................................................7
3.4 Place..................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion and Recommendation...................................................................................................8
References......................................................................................................................................10

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1. Introduction
Marketing Environment includes all the forces and actors that affect the ability of company to
maintain and develop successful relationship and transactions with the customers they target.
Marketing environment consist of micro environment and macro environment (Wilson, 2012).
To understand the concept of marketing environment a company is selected that is Apple Inc
because it is one of the leading brands in the technology industry of the world. Apple Inc. was
founded by Steve Jobs in 1976 and headquartered in Cupertino, California. Apple offers smart
phones, online services, software and tablets. Some of the popular and innovative products of
Apple are iPhone, iPod, Apple watch, iTunes and MacBook. Further, in software segment
company offer macOs and iOs. Apple is the valuable company because of innovativeness, and
strict principles and practices of human rights followed by the company and Apple is also known
for its not disclosure agreement and strong work ethics (Apple, 2019). The report consists of
marketing environment analysis of the company that includes micro and macro environment and
four P’s of marketing followed by recommendation and conclusion.
2. Marketing Environment
Marketing environment of Apple Inc. is given below to understand the practical aspects of
marketing. This includes macro environment and micro environment analysis; in macro
environment all the uncontrollable factors are analyzed that include PESTEL analysis that is
“analyzing political, economic, social, technological, environment and legal factors” (Sammut
and Galea, 2015). Micro environment is important because it has immediate and direct impact on
the company and elements in micro environment are competitors, employees, shareholders,
customers and suppliers.
2.1 Macro environment
Two macro environment forces are discussed below that impact Apple operations;
i. Political factor: Some of the political factors that affect the company are trade policies,
political instability and trade disputes. The current political factors that are identified as
the opportunities for Apple are improving trade policies and stability in political structure
of developed countries as this will create a positive environment for the company in near

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future as free trade policies will make it easy for the company to distribute its product
worldwide, whereas political stability helps Apple to grow in developed countries
because political problems in these countries will reduce. But China-U.S tension can
impact the global sales of the company (Kushida, 2017). It is considered that political
problems create a barrier for the company to expand and do business in a country as trade
dispute of China and US is taken as the threat that can affect the sales of Apple as that
could resultant in imposition of higher tariff rates on imported electronic products that
Apple use in its product assembling and higher tariff rate make product price higher that
might resultant in decrease of Apple’s product sales in the country. Political factors affect
market and industry conditions and are related to market changes, these factors affect the
company operations as stable economies help the company to plan for expansion whereas
economic growth indicates that countries are ready to accept the technological changes
(Lockamy, 2017). For example, developing economies and political stability in Asian
countries is a good indicator for the company that means Apple can expand and increase
its sales revenue.
ii. Technological factor: The technological factors that affect business conditions of Apple
are creative destruction, innovative products at lower price in the market and growing
technological capabilities. This entire factor will help in expanding the platform for
Apple in cloud computing product offering. At current situation the more technological
factors that are analyzed that can affect the company operations are raising use of smart
phones and dependency of people on digital platform or digital system. Increase in use of
smartphones will definitely increase the demand of Apple products in the market like
MacBook and iPhone (Johnson et. al, 2012). Further, threat for the business in
technological environment is legal regulations or changing regulation in technology
industry and legal challenges of Apple practices and policies. In current digitalized era,
government strengthens the rules ad regulation in digital industry that affects the
companies like Google and Apple. Furthermore, mobile market growth is analyzed as a
good opportunity for the company through that Apple can gain higher revenue from App
store and other digital platform.

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2.2 Micro environment
Micro environment factors that affect Apple are:
i. Competitors: Apple has branded the company as game changer in the laptop,
smartphone and technology industry. Apple creative marketing strategies, minimalistic
designs and technical innovation help the company to achieve an edge over its
competitors. Competitors of Apple in laptop segment; Dell and Lenovo and in
smartphones Samsung is a tough competitor as by launching innovative high class
products. Dell is the biggest competitor to Apple by launching innovative products in
laptop segment as the company is not able to compete with products of Apple but Dell
captured more market share by partnerships and acquisition that doubled the revenue and
sales of the company and this will definitely affect Apple in near future. Apple faces stiff
competition from Microsoft especially in the segment computer software, entertainment
media and smartphones. Google also introducing its product in this segment with launch
of Google Pixel (Heracleous, 2013). Competition has greater impact on the operations of
company as it is important to analyses the competitive environment that helps the
company to survive in the market by competing with other market players. In this
segment or in this industry competition is more as trends and customer preference change
frequently and creative destruction also leads to competition from small players in the
market.
ii. Suppliers: Apple deals in various product segments and the impact of suppliers behavior
can be more on the operations of the company and problem from the side of supplier
directly impact on the supply chain of the company. Analog devices based in Norwood
supplies touchscreen for Apple watch and iPhones. JBL supplies phone cases to the
company and MU supplies various modules of memory such as LPDDR3 and DRAM.
These suppliers have more influence on the company supply chain and operations as core
products of Apple are supplied by these firms (Appleyard, 2009). Supply chain of Apple
is strong but each company has influence of suppliers. Through that companies get raw
material and assemble and structure it to give final product and for Apple, suppliers play
an important role. Apple demands high quality product from its suppliers and for that
made a strict term policy on its supplier. If one supplier denied to deliver a product the

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company has other alternative also that give the benefit to company as its operations are
not affected to greater extent due to any change in suppliers (Finkle and Mallin, 2010).
3. Four P’s
Apple marketing mix is the most effective as products of the company are innovative and
different from other competitors in the market and they offer products to high income level and
elite group at luxurious prices. The company invests most of the amount in promotion and
distribution of products as their worldwide presence requires their distribution channel to be
effective and their promotion techniques are unique as they follow a set of pattern to advertise its
new products (Kotler, 2012). Below sections provides the insight into Apple marketing mix.
3.1 Product
Apple products are innovative and different as compare to its competitors in this industry and
this give an edge to the company and the main reason behind that is research on the market or on
customer preference and changing requirement. Products that Apple offers are iPod, iPhone,
iPad, Apple watch and Apple TV and Apple software. Apple sells product with name Mac and
that name was derived from the machine Macintosh. The most popular laptops that are in
demand are manufactured by Apple named MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. The iPods when
launched by the company revolutionized the music industry. The most important product in
Apple product lines is its iPhone; from this most of the Apple sales revenue is generated. Apple
TV and watches are in demand and purchase by loyal customer even this segment is getting stiff
competition from Amazon Fire TV and Samsung fitness watches. Software of Apple is iCloud,
iTunes, MacOS that are available in all the products of Apple. All these are the product offering
of Apple (Green, 2015).
3.2 Price
The pricing strategy that is used by Apple is premium pricing as thy target customers who are
ready to pay higher price to maintain a status in the society and for innovativeness and advance
technology as price of Apple products are higher than its competitor in the market but still
customers are ready to buy apple products. Apple doesn’t give discounts on their products or
never reduce its price to increase the sales or to survive in the market, product prices falls only
when a new product is launched by apple in the market. This premium pricing strategy helps the

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company to attract upper and middle class consumers and that also helps the company to
maintain its high end image (Sahoo, 2012).
3.3 Place
Place or Distribution is the most important in four P’s of marketing mix and Apple focused on
this as well and followed strict rules or guidelines to distribute its products. Distribution strategy
of Apple is that they authorize few stores to sell their products and this strategy helps the
company to create exclusivity and it reinforces the product high end image. Due to this
distribution strategy the company is able to maintain its distribution cost lower, this saving can
be invested in other areas by Apple mainly in product research. Apple distributes its product
through; Online Apple store, App store, Apple outlets and with the help of retailers (Etzioni,
2018).
3.4 Promotion
Promotion strategies of Apple include advertisement through print media and through
commercial advertisement. The company promotes its product through commercial
advertisement when product is launched and after that during the complete life cycle of product
they opt for print advertisement. Apple product advertisement follows the same style, “white
background to contrast the stylish black of their products and logo” or they do inverse of this and
advertise on black background. Apple ads are on point and specific, usually focus on innovative
feature at one time in ad and other feature in next ad of same product. With that the company
also promotes its product through yearly keynote speeches; it is an event that is conducted to
attract its brand loyal customers and company give necessary information to customers on their
upcoming products that helps Apple to create a strong brand image in front of their customer
(Heracleous and Papachroni, 2016).

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Conclusion and Recommendation
Marketing environment helps in to analyzing the forces and factors that have impact on the
operations of the company. To understand this in the above sections Apple market environment
analysis is done that includes knowing the micro and macro factors are analyzed. For macro
environment analysis political and technological factors analysis is done and for micro
environment competitor and supplier behavior is analyzed. Further, marketing mix strategies of
Apple are analyzed and from that it is concluded that a strong marketing mix helps the company
to be successful in the market and all these factors are important to develop company marketing
mix strategy. It is recommended that company can expand its customer segment and can offer
products to upper middle class. Apple is already a well-established brand but in this competitive
environment company should focus more on advertisement. It is concluded that big players like
Apple also has to be active and innovative in order to maintain its brand image in the market and
for survival marketing mix strategies of the company is most important aspect of marketing.

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References
Apple, 2019. About us. Available at: https://www.apple.com [Accessed 7 9 2019].
Appleyard, B., 2009. Steve Jobs: The man who polished Apple. Sunday Times.
Etzioni, A., 2018. Apple: Good business, poor citizen?. Journal of Business Ethics, 151(1), pp.1-
11.
Finkle, T.A. and Mallin, M.L., 2010. Steve Jobs and Apple, Inc. Journal of the International
Academy for Case Studies, 16(7), p.31.
Green, S., 2015. Apple. Bellwether Media.
Heracleous, L. and Papachroni, A., 2016. Strategic Leadership and Innovation at Apple Inc.
SAGE Publications Ltd.
Heracleous, L., 2013. Quantum strategy at apple inc. Organizational Dynamics, 42(2), pp.92-99.
Johnson, K., Li, Y., Phan, H., Singer, J. and Trinh, H., 2012. The Innovative Success that is
Apple, Inc.
Kotler, P., 2012. Kotler on marketing. Simon and Schuster.
Kushida, K.E., 2017. The politics of commoditization in global ICT industries: a political
economy explanation of the rise of Apple, Google, and industry disruptors. Journal of Industry,
Competition and Trade, 15(1), pp.49-67.
Lockamy III, A., 2017, July. An examination of external risk factors in Apple Inc.’s supply
chain. In Supply Chain Forum: An International Journal (Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 177-188). Taylor &
Francis.
Sahoo, D., 2012. Strategic Change of Campaign at Apple Inc. Vidwat, 5(2), p.38.
Sammut‐Bonnici, T. and Galea, D., 2015. PEST analysis. Wiley Encyclopedia of management,
pp.1-1.