Importance of market research

Marketing objectives drive the marketing strategies and lead business organisations achieve their business objectives. The business organisations require forming aggressive marketing mix in the lines of these objectives. The paper would first outline the goals and objectives and then go forward to study marketing mix of an organisation in the light of these objectives. The organisation which would provide the substratum for this study is the leading IT and electronics goods manufacturing company, Apple Inc (apple.com, 2018).

The action plan would aim to acquire information from the market to enable more accurate decision making process to deal with a business problem recognised. The objectives of the action plan would be facilitating marketing of products iphone 8 ranges of smart phones manufactured by Apple Inc and to strengthen its market position. The plan supports a marketing mix and the goals of the action plan namely, forming an efficient product strategy, pricing the Apple Inc. products strategically to earn maximum revenue, distribute the products extensively in the market and promote the products aggressively (Guo, Barnes & Le-Nguyen, 2015).

The target markets of Apple Inc. electronics products consist of both business consumers like other iphone selling business firms like wholesalers and domestic consumers. Iphone 8 is the high-end product of Apple Inc. which requires high involvement from the consumers. The target consumer profile of iphone 8 is the upper class consumers all over the world who have sufficient disposable income to afford high-end technologically advanced electronics products (businessinsider.in, 2018). These rich customers use iphone as a status symbol of their luxurious lifestyle. This analysis shows that the target domestic customer profile consists of rich upper class customers who lead luxurious lifestyle. It can also be inferred that the mobile phone sellers selling iphone 8 to these rich customers are the business customers to Apple. 

The target markets of Apple iphone from the geographic point of view consists of North America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Middle East and Africa. The developed markets of the world like Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Malaysia have large population of upper class people who can afford expensive iphone 8 model. The emerging markets like the Middle East are also showing increase in iphone demand owing to rise in income and growing access to internet (usnews.com, 2018).

Apple Inc. should take two steps to accomplish the two objectives outlined. They are forming a powerful marketing mix and manage each component efficiently in the direction of the business objectives. The marketing plan which would form the crux of the action plan is as follows:

Marketing objectives and marketing mix

The product strategy of Apple Inc should aim to obtain the two objectives namely, marketing of Apple products and strengthening the position of Apple products like iphone 8. Apple Inc. is a powerful brand name which the company can use to market its products superior qualities (Economist.com, 2018). The superior quality products, multiple usage friendly and affordability are the products features which differentiate the Apple products from the competing products. These products add value to the customers’ purchases which strengthens the customers’ relationship with the company. This is evident from the strong positive association the customers have with the Apple logo. The Apple products come is strong and durable packaging which ensures the customers receive products in good condition (Guo, Barnes & Le-Nguyen, 2015). Apple Inc. has a wide network of customer service outlets which facilitate contact between the employees and the customers. This shows that Apple can provide customers with both superior products which are tangible and services which are intangible. These features would enable the multinational electronics company to accomplish its business objectives of marketing its products in the market and gaining high market position.

The pricing strategy of Apple Inc. especially with reference to its flagship product iphone 8 should aim to attract rich upper class customers and represent the high-end technology which these products use. The customers view iphone as the superior quality high-end smart phone in the market and often rate it as the best in the category. Thus, the high prices of iphone range of smart phones act as a guarantee of their high quality which attracts the rich customers towards these products. The company should also consider loss of profits due to negative customer experiences like embarrassment, fear and rejection while comparing the Apple products with the competitive products (Chun & Choi, 2014). The company in order to accomplish strong market presence can adopt two types of pricing namely, market penetration pricing and price skimming to market its products. Apple must use market penetration pricing to sell its affordable products like the smart watches online. This would enable it to accomplish its business objective of gaining deep market penetration (nytimes.com, 2018). The skimming pricing technique would help the company sell its new high-end products like iphone 8 and tablets to rich customers and earn huge revenue. These two strategies in a combined way would enable the company exceed its market capitalisation of a trillion dollars (forbes.com, 2018). 

Target market segments

The place or the distribution strategy of Apple would take into account selection of positions of outlets, motivation of the channel partners and their evaluation. Apple should take into account the product and pricing strategy to decide on the place strategy. The high end products like iphone 8 can be made available at the Apple outlets, shopping malls and the local electronic goods retailers in the urban and semi urban regions (Economist.com, 2018). This would ensure market penetration of Apple both in the urban and semi-urban and rural markets. The company should evaluate the performances of the retailers channel partners on the basis of parameters like number of units of Apple products sold and revenue generated. The company must award these highly performing channel partners to motivate them. This strategy will have two advantages to Apple Inc.. Firstly, it will enable the company to judge its distribution channel, acquire new efficient distributors, retain the existing efficient distributors and remove inefficient distributors (Strauss, 2016). Secondly, it will enable the company to motivate more distributors to sell Apple products which will help the company to accomplish its business objective of deeper market penetration.

Apple should exploit the digital channels like mails, telemarketing, online catalogue promotion and internet marketing to market its products. This strategy of digital presence would enable to company to promote and sell products in remote areas where local retailers do not have access to Apple electronics products.

The promotional activities would enable Apple achieve its business targets of deeper market penetration, enhancement of the market capitalisation and generate higher revenue. The promotional strategy of the electronic giant would encompass advertising, public relationship (PR) and sales promotion. The international image of Apple, the high quality its products, availability of the Apple products at both high and low prices, superior availability, strong online presence and superior customers services are the chief unique selling propositions of the company. These benefits enable the company to create value to the customers and differentiate its products from its competitors. The creative catch lines of the company act as powerful promotional tools. The catch lines like ‘Say hello to the future’ and ‘A new generation of iphone’ speak about the futuristic product strategy of the company (apple.com, 2018). The company while advertising its products should stress on the benefits and the value which they can create to customers to differentiate them from competitive products.

Apple Inc. should follow an aggressive public relationship strategy to promote its products in the market. The company should use its international brand name to avail press coverage, story publishing and event oriented marketing all over the world to promote its products to gain deeper market penetration (Strauss, 2016).

Product strategy

Apple Inc.  should use sales promotional strategies like distributing merchandise like T-shirts, hats and key chains among customers which would allow the company to spread awareness among even people who do not consume its products (apple.com, 2018). The company can use this strategy to convert non-consumers to consumers. Apple can promote its products at consumer and trade fairs. This would allow the company to promote its products to both industrial and domestic customers. 

Apple Inc. to achieve its business goals should concentrate on building its sales force strategy besides forming marketing mix. The company must consider strengthening its sales force in all its geographically dispersed locations. The sales force should be trained on latest products, type of customers like business customers or in a combination of both. The human resource department and the top management of Apple should recruit, train, compensate and motivate the sales force to streamline them with the objectives of the company. The sales force should be trained in different strategies and tactics to train them to deal with customers more efficiently.

Apple should ensure that sales personnel systematically listen to customer complain and monitor them to give timely solutions (nytimes.com, 2018). They should help the company gain information about market competition and latest trends.

This setting of marketing mix along the business objectives should be carried under the supervision of the apex management. The top managers and middle level managers of all the locations should contribute towards collection of information regarding marketing environments in different markets like Asia and America (Strauss, 2016). They should then guide the top management to form appropriate marketing strategies.

The formation of marketing strategy would take one year since it would involve all the branches and subsidiaries of Apple Inc.. The start date can be February 1, 2018 while the end data can be February 1, 2019.

Particulars	Amount ($)	Amount ($)
Sources of Income
Amount allocated by finance department	1,000,000.00
Venture capital from bank	2,000,000.00
Reveneue from discount sales	100,000.00	3,100,000.00
Sources of Expenses
Staff salary	1,000,000.00
Raw materials	100,000.00
Wages of labour	800,000.00
Warehousing	100,000.00
Electricity	10,000.00
Discount sales(loss)	100,000.00
Free gifts like caps and key chain for sales promotion	500,000.00
Advertising costs	50,000.00	2,660,000.00
Budget surplus(Estimated profit)		440,000.00

The budget table above clearly shows that the programme would cost $2660000. The budgetary items would be divided into two parts namely, sources of funds and the sources of expenditure. The sources of funds are amount allocated by the finance department towards the project, venture capital lent by the bank and revenue earned from discount sales. It has been assumed that the company has sold products of total value $200000 at discount of 50 percent as part of sales promotion. That is why 50 percent of the amount, $100000 appears in revenue from discount sales while the other half is shown as expenditure.  

Pricing strategy

The expenses on the other hand consist of staff salary, raw materials, wages of labour, warehousing, electricity, discount sales, free gifts and advertising costs. The estimated profits or return on investments is $440000. 

Apple Inc. would be able to measure the success of the action plan on the grounds of the return from marketing operations.  A positive return or profits on the investments in the marketing plan would prove the success of the firm.  The company should use quantitative parameters to test its success. The parameters can be based on increase in sales of Apple Inc products like iphone 8 measured in dollars, increase in market share compared to its competitors particularly to  its toughest competitor, Samsung and the rate of increase in customer satisfaction (Strauss, 2016). This can be proved by increase in the number of positive feedback by the customers. Advertising effectiveness can also prove the success of Apple in its new marketing strategy. For example, the increase in the number of customers at the Apple stores and the increase in the number of viewership on the official website would indicate increase in customer interest in Apple products (usnews.com, 2018). This increase can predict future sales of products because more visitors would means more number of customers likely to buy Apple products and increase in revenue generation.

February	March	April	May	June	July	Aug	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan
Collection of market data from all the markets like Asia, Africa, Europe, North America (Monthly function 1)	Marketing mix strategy (Monthly 2)
			Acquisition of raw materials, staffing
				Production of electronics goods
						Promotion of products (Half yearly)
Selling of products, opening of stores and image building

Conclusion:

One can conclude the above discussion that alignment of business objectives and marketing strategies are crucial for market leadership of companies. This holds stronger for the multinational companies like Apple Inc. which have to hold against strong competitors like Apple. These multinational companies should prepare their marketing mixes by synthesising market information from all the important markets where they operate. They should form a timeline to manage their marketing operations and measure the generated profits to ensure that they perform well in the international market. 

References:

Apple | Economist – World News, Politics, Economics, Business & Finance. (2018). The Economist. Retrieved 14 January 2018, from https://www.economist.com/topics/apple

Chun, S. H., & Choi, B. S. (2014). Service models and pricing schemes for cloud computing. Cluster Computing, 17(2), 529-535.

Forbes Welcome. (2018). Forbes.com. Retrieved 14 January 2018, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2017/12/18/apple-still-selling-over-1-million-iphone-8s-and-xs-per-day/#44f62df653f2

Goel, V. (2018). Why Apple Is Experiencing Another Growth Spurt. Nytimes.com. Retrieved 14 January 2018, from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/technology/apple-earnings-growth-iphone.html

Guo, Y., Barnes, S., & Le-Nguyen, K. (2015). Consumer Acceptance It Products: An Integrative Expectation-Confirmation Model.

In 1987, former Apple CEO John Sculley asked George Lucas to create a video depicting the computer of the future – and people were furious. (2018). Business Insider. Retrieved 14 January 2018, from https://www.businessinsider.in/In-1987-former-Apple-CEO-John-Sculley-asked-George-Lucas-to-create-a-video-depicting-the-computer-of-the-future-and-people-were-furious/articleshow/61325302.cms

iPhone. (2018). Apple. Retrieved 14 January 2018, from https://www.apple.com/iphone/

Strauss, J. (2016). E-marketing. Routledge.

The 10 Countries With the Highest Smartphone Penetration. (2018). usnews.com. Retrieved 14 January 2018, from https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2016-03-21/the-10-countries-with-the-highest-smartphone-penetration