Ch. 16 - Advertising, Public Relations and Sales Promotion

             

     Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of  advertising. 

                                              ------Mark Twain

            

           Advertising is impersonal, one-way mass communication about a product or organization that is paid for by a marketer.

         

            Why do we need advertising?  Because of we need advertising to make customers aware of a product or service. We need advertising to create demand. Advertising is like a tube, which uses to spread a firm’s idea to everybody.  Through the tube, customers begin to familiar with the firm. According to the words above, there might be some people think Apple doesn’t need advertising because it is a worldwide well-known and successful company. That’s no true. Products don’t sell themselves, no matter how good they are. They need to be introduced to market in order to be purchased. On the other hand, even though Apple has great products, it still needs advertising and sales promotion to increase its market shares. In addition, the purpose of advertising is not only to increase sales and informs products, it also be able to transforming a person’s negative attitude about a company or a product into a positive one.

            Apple has many iconic ad campaigns, and its most significant and inspired ad campaigns include the 1984s Super Bowl commercial, the 1990s Think Different campaign, and the IPod people of the 2000s. Because of these meaningful commercials, I would determine Apple as advocacy advertising. Additionally, the company no only satisfies with TV commercials, it also advertises on Internet. The company has its own official website for customers to discover more information about its products. Besides advertising, the company begins to slightly focus on sales promotions. For example, recently the company announced to make its certain Apps for free such as I-work, Pagers, and Numbers.

           

            Since 2009, Apple has doubled its ad budget, hitting $1 billion in 2012. Back in 2009, Apple’s ad budget was a mere $501 millions.

Ch. 14 - Marketing Channels and Retailing

            

           Apple has over four hundred retail stores worldwide, and four of them are located in NYC. All these stores are owned and operated by Apple. The company hires around 26,000 U.S retail employees and includes 4,000 retail employees in the New York state. The large number of retail employees supports the company’s remarkable and unique services. In NYC, Apple store are no only retail stores. It also plays a role as landmark in NYC, which attracts thousands of tourists visiting its stores everyday.

            The stores offer outstanding level of services, including the genius bar, free workshops, muti-language service and one to one service and unique design of stores. These features make the retail stores completely different from other competitors’ stores.

            In the apple store you can find all its products on the old fashion wooden tables and customers representatives are there waiting to help you. One of my most like about the stores is genius bar where super knowledgeable employees will help its customers solve problems or questions. The stores have a very welcoming atmosphere, and the personnel at the stores are very attentive and knowledgeable. An apple employee tells me that the one I visit in Grand Central is the biggest apple retail store in the United States. The store sets up its Macs and offer free web connectivity to customers, so it’s look like give its customers freedom to do whatever what they want do. I think it is a smart way to introduce its products to customers.

          

       

 Apple no only sells its products in its retail store. It also has strategic channel alliances such as Best Buy, Wal-Mart, AT&T, and Target. This helps Apple to obtain markets in small cities where has no Apple store.

Ch. 6 - Consumer Decision Making

      In the previous chapter, we already talked about the target market and understood who are our current and future customers. After that, we have to analyze consumer behaviors how consumers make purchase decisions. Understanding the factors of consumer decision making can help marketing managers attract customers’ eyes in order to increase market shares.

      Consumers do not come out with the purchase decisions without thinking about and comparing the products. When making a decision of whether to buy, or not to buy, and what to buy or when to buy the consumer generally follows the consumer decision process. According to the book, there are five steps can be used as a guide for study how consumers make decisions.

      The first stage in the consumer decision-making process is need recognition. Back to a decade ago, people used to consider electronics to be a want more than a need. Now a day, electronic has become more popular and necessary than ever in human history that gives Apple a chance and confidence to become a giant technological company. Through its effort and (ex)internal stimulus, Apple makes its products become daily necessary goods.

      After recognizing a need or want, the next step will be search for information. There are two types of information search, internal or external information search. Most Apple consumers are loyal customers. Thus, they prefer to use internal information search that rely on previous experience with its products. For new customers, they choose external information search such as advertizing, friend’s recommendation, and promotion. All in all, if you are living on the earth, you will be able to find something about Apple.

      After getting all the information, the next step is to evaluate alternatives and purchase. Even though Apple is very popular and on the top of electronic markets, it may be lost its customers in this step because of the price. However, as we know high quality products always company with high price. Apple has so many competitors in different products. For example, Iphone v.s Samsung Galaxy, and Ipad v.s Windows tablet (I prefer Win pro). Purchasing Apple’s products is very easy, you can just simply order online with free shipping or go to one of the 253 retail stores in the U.S.

      Finally, the last step is post purchase behavior. A lot of businesses think when the product was shipped; they have done with the consumers. This is a dangerous thought. Businesses should also pay attention to post purchase behavior that determines whether the consumer is satisfied or dissatisfied with the purchase. If consumers expectations were satisfied, they will become your consumers again, otherwise, they will turn around their heads and walk away.

Ch. 5 - Developing a Global Vision

        First of all, congratulations to Apple. According to Interbrand, Apple has become the world’s most valuable brand and over CoCa-Cola’s thirteen years domination. The success of Apple today cannot without its global vision, which directly help the firm become world’s most valuable and successful corporation.

        After Iphone 5c was introduced on weeks ago, it is very clear for us that the company begins to more focus on the global market. The company tries to make it products affordable for its potential customers around the world. Increasing the cost competitive advantage will help Apple to attract those middle or lower income customers to purchase its products.  On the other hand, various new colors on Iphone give consumer more option to choose what they want. In addition, recently, the golden Iphone 5s becomes hot topic in Asia countries such as India and China, where have deep gold culture. It is kind of market strategy to cater foreign markets.

   

    Apple got 63% of its revenues of iphone from outside of the U.S on 2012, and the market shares keep growing.

         In addition, globalization brings benefits to the firm, such as outsourcing, which reduces Apple’s wage expenses, potential global market that increase its product market share, and gains skillful engineers, who will help to build Apple’s future.