Analysis of Marketing Mix Strategies for Apple and Fitbit Watches

This report analyzes the marketing mix strategies of Apple and Fitbit for their series 4 and series 2 watches, comparing their target market, product features, pricing, and distribution channels. Findings show that Fitbit's marketing planning is more effective than Apple's.

Principles of Marketing

Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.............................................................................................................1
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
FINDINGS.......................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The aim of this report is to analysis and implementation of combination of 4p's of
marketing mix to know how successfully Apple and Fitbit applied these elements for their
products of series4 and series2 watches. Secondary research method is used for findings. As per
the study it is observed that Fitbit's planning for marketing is more effective than Apple.
INTRODUCTION
Marketing mix is described as a process of planning and combining all the elements of
marketing for accomplishment of objectives and purpose of organisation (Wu and Li, 2018). It
includes a number of components like 4p's that are Place, Promotion, Product and Price,
important for a company to increase accessibility of its business. Effective implementation of
marketing mix helps the company in successful marketing of a good or product.
American multinational technology company Apple launched its series 4 watch in 2018
at a press conference of company (Apple Watch Series 4, 2020). This waterproof and fitness
tracking watch introduced with additional feature of electrocardiogram which shows heart beats.
Fitbit consumer electronics and fitness company of America introduced its versa2 watch
with great features of fitness and sleep tracking. This hits the stores on 15th September (FITBIT
VERSA 2 ,2019).
In this report target market of Fitbit and Apple is discussed with comparison. Further
product, place, price and promotion strategies are analysed with comparison to find out the
effectiveness of marketing mix implementation.
FINDINGS
Comparison between the target market of Apple and Fitbit:-
Apple's series 4 watches is re-designed product with exclusive innovative modifications
such as- 30% larger display, ECG function, gold colour and some more. While Fitbit2 is most
preferred fitness tracking watch with new features like – smart alarm, new sleep tools, heart rate
and many more.
Target Market –
Target market is refers as the group of customers at which goods and services aims to satisfy
needs and wants of customers that are important in context of effective business operation
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(TARGET, MORE and EVER). Following are the comparison between target customers of Fitbit
& Apple watch: Gender: For series4 watch company targeted both men and woman customers. As
compared to Apple Fitbit focuses only on women customers for targeting them for new
product (Festa and et. al., 2016). Age: On the basis of age of people, the Apple targeted male and females between 20-45
ages for series 4 watches. As compared to Apple, Fitbit focused on females of 25-44 ages
for its target customers, who are health and fitness conscious. Income level: Apple considered customers who have high earnings as a target audience
to increase profit as much possible. On the contrary of Aplle, Fitbit focuses on people
from middle- and upper-income levels for its target customers. It helps in maximising the
sales volume of company (Ito and Fujimaki 2017). Social class: The company Apple focuses on high class people who have high standards
of living. Because Apple product's prices are too high and people from high classes can
bear these high costs. As compared to Apple, Fitbit targets those individuals who belongs
from middle and upper classes. Because of its reasonable prices people from above
classes can easily pay for fitbit2.
 Education and profession: Apple targets professionals and managers who have high
earning sources. On the other hand, Fitbit targets those individuals who are college
graduates or professionals (Malhotra, Sivakumar and Zhu, 2009).
Product/ brand:-
It refers to the physical goods or items of a company required for satisfying the needs and
wants of consumers for which they are ready to pay (Garg, Singh and De, 2016). Apple has a
wide range of products such as- iPhone, iPod, iPad, watches etc. the prominent differences
between Apple series4 and Fitbit2 watch products in terms of functional and emotional level are
discussed below - Features: The key features of new product of Apple included GPS services which is not
connected with Phone, reading heart rate. On the other hand, essential feature of Fitbit's
new product involved light weight, GPS connected with phone (Postacchini and Ludeno,
2019).
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 Design: Apple4 series watch is introduced with 40 mm display in gold colour. The
design of its dial is curved. It looks simple in design. While Fitbit2 watch launched with
sports, leather, stainless steel straps and flat dial. Which shows its exclusive and stunning
design.
 Brand name: Series 4 watch comes under the huge brand name Apple. The brand image
of company is already popular due to its high sustainability and quality. While the new
product of Fitbit has more popular and preferred brand as compare to Apple4 watch. This
is because of its fitness tracking features, battery life and price (Yang and Dong, 2017).
Price: -
Another important element of marketing mix is the value of products offered by
customers in monetary terms with exchange of goods and services. Prices for apple4 and Fitbit2
watch are considered below:
Apple has large customers base that are high income earners and ready to pay for luxury
and exploring lifestyles. Apple enjoying brand loyalty from its targeted customers. They prefer
to use updated products of Apple only and ready to pay exclusive prices in return. Thus, due to
high demand for innovative and specific products Apple uses premium pricing strategy for its
product series4 watch. On the other hand, it focuses on psychological pricing strategy for its
product Fitbit2 watch for attracting maximum numbers of people as much as possible. In this
pricing strategy companies sets lower than the whole price of the products like 99.99 and 199.99
euros. In premium pricing strategy Apple sets high prices for its quality products to increase
brand value. This leads to maximisation of profit and revenues of firm (Kucuk, 2017). Apple
uses premium pricing for higher profit margins of organisation. While as compared to Apple,
Fitbit uses psychological prices that helps to gain more customers and increasing the sales and
profit of enterprise. This strategy focuses buyer's attention on a specific products and services.
By setting bit lower prices than competitors help in earning a competitive advantage over them
(Rofin and Mahanty, 2020).
Place/ physical distribution:-
Distribution and placing of a product are crucial part of marketing mix. It consists of the
platform where customer can access the goods and products (Zelenskaya and Elkanova, 2020).
Physical distribution of Apple4 and Fitbit2 watches are considered as follows:
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Source: Apple Store, 2020
In terms of Apple the aim is to position its product everywhere for increasing awareness
of business among targeted customers. Company display its new products and services in its
stores. Customer can get Apple4 watch from its own stores and through online process also. Firm
has global distributors for delivering the product. While as compared to Apple, Fitbit offer its
products through various method including online (e-commerce, social media) and offline
(manual stores). Company has partner agents in different countries who provides information
regarding reliable information about acceptance and popularity of product. Apple uses authorised
sellers like Amazon, wall-mart for convey their message and deliver product to consumers. On
the other hand Fitbit place its product on online websites who helps in tracking online orders.
Apple uses effective distribution strategies for its product series4 watch. Its management collects
raw materials from different countries and make a high quality of product and then use many
distribution channels for delivering product to final customers. This indicates successful
distribution decisions of Apple. On the contrary social media is another important place of Fitbit
for communicating message and taking orders from direct messages. It shows companies direct
channel of distribution through own website or indirect distribution via franchisees, authorised
sellers etc. (Bailey, Pitelis and Tomlinson, 2018).
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Illustration 1: Apple Store, 2020

Source: Electronics Department Design, 2016
Promotion: -
This element of marketing mix is related to communicating the information and features
about a product which leads to enhance brand recognition and sales of the company (Kumar,
Shankar and Aljohani, 2019). The promotion and marketing strategies of Apple and Fitbit in
terms of new products are described as follows:
Apple4 series watch invested large amount of money on marketing of its products and
goods. Company traditionally uses advertisements for promoting and marketing of its products
and services. On the other hand, Fitbit uses hoardings at high density locations to promote and
highlight its product in front of customers. Company also uses advertisements as an emotional
appeal to demonstrate goods and services towards consumers (Diarta, 2017). Apple also focuses
on press conferences for communicating products and services to its customers. Firm uses print,
TV and social media ads to covey information about product to its target audience. Apple
introduced series4 watch in vogue magazine with considering the style and body combinations of
brand. While, Fitbit introduced its fitness tracking watch Fitbit2 social media ads and TV ads
with intention to capture large customer base that helps in increasing the sale of company (Wu
and Li, 2018). In Apple Broadcast promotional strategy is also used for this product. For
instance, exclusive product is also seen in the hands of actors in many popular shows of
America. It shows the effective promotion and marketing strategies of Apple. People liked
Fitbit2 watch product due to its design, fitness features and favourable prices. Club cards is also
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Illustration 2: Electronics Department Design, 2016

used by Fitbit to promote and marketing its products and services. Company uses successful
promotion strategies for their product (Tang and Hu, 2019).
CONCLUSION
It has been summarised from this report that marketing mix plays important role in
boosting the sale and profit of business. Both companies Apple and Fitbit adopted different
strategies for their products. Fitbit2 watch is most preferred due to its long battery life and
nominal prices as compare to Apple 4 series watch. Apple should focus on lower prices of its
product in order to raise market share & customer base of firm from middle class people as well.
This will results in effective implementation of marketing mix strategies of business.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Festa, G. and et. al., 2016. The (r) evolution of wine marketing mix: From the 4Ps to the
4Es. Journal of Business Research. 69(5). pp.1550-1555.
Garg, S.A., Singh, H. and De, K.K., 2016. Direct and indirect effects of marketing mix elements
on satisfaction. Academy of Marketing Studies Journal. 20(1). p.53.
Kucuk, S.U., 2017. Marketing and Marketing Mix. In Visualizing Marketing (pp. 3-7). Palgrave
Macmillan, Cham.
Kumar, A., Shankar, R. and Aljohani, N.R., 2019. A big data driven framework for demand-
driven forecasting with effects of marketing-mix variables. Industrial Marketing
Management.
Wu, Y.L. and Li, E.Y., 2018. Marketing mix, customer value, and customer loyalty in social
commerce. Internet Research.
TARGET, D., MORE, M.I. and EVER, T., Defining your target market.
Malhotra, S., Sivakumar, K. and Zhu, P., 2009. Distance factors and target market selection: the
moderating effect of market potential. International Marketing Review.
Yang, L. and Dong, S., 2017. Sustainable product strategy in apparel industry with consumer
behavior consideration. Sustainability. 9(6). p.920.
Postacchini, M. and Ludeno, G., 2019. Combining numerical simulations and normalized scalar
product strategy: a new tool for predicting beach inundation. Journal of Marine Science and
Engineering. 7(9). p.325.
Ito, S. and Fujimaki, R., 2017. August. Optimization beyond prediction: Prescriptive price
optimization. In Proceedings of the 23rd ACM SIGKDD international conference on
knowledge discovery and data mining (pp. 1833-1841).
Rofin, T.M. and Mahanty, B., 2020. Impact of wholesale price discrimination by the
manufacturer on the profit of supply chain members. Management Decision.
Bailey, D., Pitelis, C. and Tomlinson, P.R., 2018. A place-based developmental regional
industrial strategy for sustainable capture of co-created value. Cambridge journal of
economics. 42(6). pp.1521-1542.
Zelenskaya, E. and Elkanova, E., 2020. Designing place brand architecture: the potential of a
sub-brands strategy. Journal of Product & Brand Management.
Tang, T. and Hu, P., 2019. Quantitative standard of promotion strategy and analysis on the
influence of consumer purchase behavior. Cluster Computing. 22(2). pp.4949-4955.
Diarta, I.K.S., 2017. Promotion strategy of Borobudur world cultural heritage site for
international tourists. Udayana Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities (UJoSSH). 1(2).
pp.190-194.
Online
Apple Watch Series 4. 2020. [Online] Available through
<https://www.apple.com/in/newsroom/2018/09/redesigned-apple-watch-series-
4-revolutionizes-communication-fitness-and-health/>/.
FITBIT VERSA 2. 2019. [Online] Available through
<https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/9/20855458/fitbit-versa-2-review-fitness-
tracker-smartwatch-price-specs-features >/.
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