International Business: Apple Inc. Case Study Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Apple Inc.'s international business operations. It begins with an overview of the company, followed by an examination of its operational and strategic considerations in the global market. The report delves into Apple's competitive environment, highlighting key rivals and market dynamics. It then explores the company's ethical practices and corporate governance structure. A detailed SWOT analysis assesses Apple's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats within the international context. The report concludes with recommendations for sustaining a competitive advantage, emphasizing the importance of emergent strategic planning, differentiation, and customer satisfaction. The analysis draws upon various sources, including academic journals, government reports, and industry insights, to provide a well-rounded perspective on Apple's global business strategies.

Running Head: INTERNATIONL BUSINESS
International Business
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Executive Summary
The report aims at analysing critically about the various stages of the strategic and operational
consideration in the global business environment. The report also outlines the competitive
environment of the organization along with the ethics and the corporate governance. The report
then elaborates with SWOT analysis in the global market and concludes after summarizing the
entire discussion giving a short recommendation.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Discussion........................................................................................................................................4
Overview of the company............................................................................................................4
Operational consideration............................................................................................................5
Strategic consideration.................................................................................................................5
The organizational competitive environment..............................................................................5
Ethics and Corporate governance of Apple Inc..........................................................................6
SWOT Analysis...........................................................................................................................6
Conclusion and recommendation................................................................................................7
Reference.........................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
The international business is actually the trade of the goods, the technology, the services
and the knowledge across all of the national borders at the transnational life. It further includes
the cross-border transactions of the goods and the services between many such countries. In
order to conduct the business overseas, all of the multinational companies are required to bridge
some separate domestic markets into one such global marketplace. There are also some of the
macro-scale factors which underline the specific trend of the globalization (Clemons 2019).. The
rapid development of globalization has supported the companies to operate in multiple countries.
In this report, the critical analysis of the various stages of operational and the strategic aspects in
the global business environment will be provided along with the critical analysis of the
competitive environment of the organization. The report will also outline the ethics and corporate
governance of the company along with the SWOT analysis in the international market. The
report will conclude having summarized the whole discussion and provide a brief
recommendation.
Discussion
Overview of the company
The Apple Inc is one American multinational technology company that is headquartered
in California, Cupertino. The company actually designs, then develops and sells the consumer
electronics, the online services and the computer software (Apple.com 2020). It is further
considered as one of the biggest technology companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook.
The hardware product of the company consists of the iPhone, iPad, Mac personal computer, iPod
media player and others (D O'Rourke 2018).

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Operational consideration
Since Apple Inc. is working widely in the international markets, there are some
operational considerations of the company. The company is found to be concentrating on the
standards of the quality and the controls (Apple.com 2020).The different areas of attention are
the retail marketing, the industrial design, the human resource management and others (Gareis.
and Lecoeuvre 2016). Hence, it can be said that Apple follows a holistic approach for ensuring
that quality is maintained in the area of operation management.
Strategic consideration
In Apple Inc. there is a set of actions and the decisions that are used for the formulation
and the execution of the strategies which will give a competitively superior position for the
organizations and its whole environment for attaining of the goals. The strategic management
further helps the managers in making choices regarding how they can add value to their
organization(Apple.com 2020).. In Apple Inc. they make the decisions regarding whether the
company will execute same activities than done by the competitors (Gareis and Lecoeuvre 2016).
The strategic management of the organization consists of scanning of the external and the
internal environment along with the strategic factors that might require the change. Its strategy of
innovation has led the company to stay strong in poor economic times. Therefore, it has
continued the upgrading of its products as laptops (Marian 2017). Along with this, there has been
a change in the organizational structure and a revised reward system too for ensuring that the
resources and the employees are utilized making the formulated strategy a reality.
The organizational competitive environment

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It is found that Apple has faced string competitive force or rivalry in the global context.
The companies such as LG and Samsung are competing aggressively with Apple. The
aggressiveness is observable through the advertising, the rapid innovation and imitation too.
Also, many of the most popular apps are available for the Ios devices and Android where the
cloud storage services are quite available to the IOS users (Marian 2017). Since the Apple
products are quite expensive, there are low switching costs available in the market. The
customers can smoothly switch from Apple to other brands.
Ethics and Corporate governance of Apple Inc.
Ethics and corporate governance are two inseparable parts of a company’ operation and
the strategic management and Apple has given much focus on this. There is strictly described
rules and policies for the employers, the employees, the managing bodies and others(Apple.com
2020).Apple has a unitary board of the directors consisting of the executive and the non-
executive directors (Payne 2017). In order to ensure that the board of directors is able to deliver
whatever is expected of them, Apple has provided strict guidelines that guide the appointment of
the board members. The shareholders of Apple are having good time since they will have more
representation that is independent on their specific Board with an addition to a new director.
SWOT Analysis
The SWOT analysis of Apple consists of a search for then strengths, the weaknesses, the
opportunities and the threats. The external information of the company can be found from the
professional journals, the government reports, the bankers, the suppliers and the customers in the
international context.

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The key strengths of Apple Inc reflect the core competencies that are the capabilities valued by
the customers and the competitors for finding difficulty in duplicating (Soh and Najihah 2019).
One of the biggest strengths of Apple is the financial stability which fosters the continuous
innovation of the products. There is consistency in its design, have consumer loyalty, have high
profit margins 13.9% of market share. One weakness is that there is limited network of
distribution, short product life of the products, high prices of the products. There are also many
opportunities of the company it terms of the distribution network expansion, development of the
new product lines, accessory potential, creation of some new product lines (Yoffie and Baldwin
2018). Among the threats in the international context, one such threat is imitation of product
design by other brands, aggressive competition, tax scandals, loss of the innovations, developing
labour costs and few more.
Conclusion and recommendation
Therefore, it can be recommended that the competition for the products that Apple Inc.
deals in is developing so much. In order to sustain in the international market and gain the
competitive advantage, the company should adopt the emergent strategic planning, the
differentiation ensuring that the company incorporates the innovations. It should also focus on its
moving the relationship from the point of view of the customers to a completely integrated chain
revolving around the satisfaction of the customers. It will help the company to give tough
competition in the international level. It should further monitor the regulatory political climates
or some global economic conditions for better improvement. This report has outlines in brief
about the operational and strategic consideration, the competition in the market, the ethics and
governance of the organization , SWOT analysis of Apple for understanding the way it is
operating in the global market.

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Reference
Apple.com (2020). Apple. [online] Apple. Available at: https://www.apple.com/ [Accessed 11
Feb. 2020].
Clemons, E.K., 2019. Resources, Platforms, and Sustainable Competitive Advantage: How to
Win and Keep on Winning. In New Patterns of Power and Profit (pp. 93-104). Palgrave
Macmillan, Cham.
D O'Rourke, A., 2018. The world apple market. Routledge.
Gareis, R. and Lecoeuvre, L., 2016. Corporate Governance of the Project-Oriented Company:
Contributing to Its Sustainable Development. In The Performance of Projects and Project
Management (pp. 105-116). Routledge.
Marian, A.I., 2017. Some aspects of Supply Chain Risk Management Global Risks Map and
Apple's Approach to Risk Management. Quality-Access to Success, 18(160).
Payne, B., 2017. Brand Positioning and its Usefulness for Brand Management: the Case of Apple
Inc. Newcastle business school student journal, 1(1), pp.51-57.
Soh, N. and Najihah, N., 2019. AN ANALYSIS OF AN EXPLANATION OF APPLE INC.
Yoffie, D.B. and Baldwin, E., 2018. Apple Inc. in 2018.

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