Introduction

Apple is a U.S.A based public company which is established in April 01, 1976, 40 years ago from now. It is a technology company that designs, develops, and sells consumers electronics, computer software, and online services. Apple’s hardware products are including iPhone, iPod, iPad, MacBook, laptop, and TV. Apple is now the world’s largest technology company by revenue, the world’s largest company by total assets, and world’s second largest mobile phone manufacturer. In November 2014 apple became the 1^st U.S. company to be valued to over 700$ billion as a publicly traded company. Apple Inc. employs 115,000 full time employees and they have 478 retail shops as March 2016. In this assignment the marketing function used by Apple Inc. is described as well as use by the other company. Use of marketing mix by Apple is also given with a comparison with Samsung. The marketing plan for Apple Inc. is also described in the assignment with how they obtain their goals and objectives. Apples products and pricing strategy was described broadly in this assignment.

Task 01

Explain the key roles and responsibilities of marketing function in your chosen organization.

Marketing functions are the roles that help a company to find out the potential and successful products for a given market place and make then make the product popular among the customer by differentiating them from other similar products. There are several marketing functions done by different types of company and from them the major sevens are including distribution, financing, market research, pricing, product, service management, promotion and selling. The marketing functions done by Apple Inc. are given below.

Figure1: marketing function of Apple Inc.

Source: own creation.

The major marketing functions of Apple are described below with their roles and responsibilities.

Distribution

Distribution is the way by which a company sends a product to the people who want to buy them. The important in business is to manufacture a product but it is more important that by how the company will send the product to the customer who is accepting buy that product. It can be set up in the part of a city where the company thinks customer will get the product easily (Ammi, 2007). Apple Inc. produces several electric products like smartphone, laptop, smart watch, TV, Mac and so on. They use several distributional activities to reach the product to the hand of final customers such as:

§ Apple stores

§ Online apple stores

§ Authorized retailers

§ Telecom companies and

§ Fulfillment service.

Roles: Apple uses distribution service to make their products visible to the customers by using different types of physical and visual stores like Walmart, best buy, app store.

Distribution also makes apples product hand of the customers who wants to buy it. For example, Apple set their retail stores in China in order to make easy access of Apple’s product by the customers of chine.

Responsibilities: distribution is responsible for making sure about the product is in the hand of the customer.

Promotion

Apple’s marketing function also includes promotional activities which emphasizes and ensure premium quality of Apple’s product to support more target buyers. The elements of Apple’s promotional tools are including:

§ Advertisement

§ Personal selling

§ Sales promotion

§ Public relation.

Apples reach their promotional activities by their website, TVC, and through other sites as technology news sites.

Roles: Apples promotional activities make their customer aware about the existing products and make informative about upcoming such as customers are now have enough information about iPhone 8 as it does not introduce in the market yet (Busch, 2007).

Responsibility: Promotional activities are responsible for communicating with the customers.

Prices and pricing strategy:

Price is a very sensitive issue for every product and says a lot of things about a product. Customers are most of the time judge a product by its price. Apple uses a premium pricing strategy for their product. The price of any product of Apple is very high that’s why Apple is calls the brand of rich people (Espejo, Advertising.). Apples higher price says that:

§ They are for higher classes

§ Premium quality

§ Small sale big profit.

Roles: price gives a primary view about a product so Apple sets their price relatively higher. Their pricing strategy says that high price for high quality.

Responsibility: price of Apples product works for transmitting brand values.

Product management

Products are the key elements of business and way to earn profit. Product function makes the product produce in the industry and do the task related with producing product including collecting raw materials. Apples products are

§ Mac

§ iPad

§ iPod

§ iPhone

§ Apple TV

§ Apple watch

§ Software

Roles: product function makes the company to manufacture a product and get it out of the industry.

Responsibility: the major responsibility of a product is to meet customers’ needs and wants and Apple make their product so that they can satisfy their customers.

P2: Explain how roles and responsibilities of marketing function relate to the wider organizational context, with reference to the chosen organization.

Marketing functions makes an organization able to meet their marketing strategy successful. Elements of marketing functions are including financing, distribution, promotion, product management, pricing strategy and so on. These functions are enables a company to let their product hand of the customer and as well as wider organizational use. How roles and responsibilities of marketing function is relate the wider organizational context of Apple Inc. is given below:

How roles of marketing function relate to wider organizational context:

Sound marketing plan

Marketing plan is the process of collecting information about the market and take initiatives according to the collected information. To make a sound marketing plan any organization will be depends upon distribution function because this function collects relevant information about the market, customers, and competitors (Krishna, 2013).

Investment in equipment and facilities

Financial function of marketing makes the organization invest in a right equipment by counting the time value of money, rate of return and so on. Apple Inc. is about to launching their new iPhone model which is Iphone8 and financial function helps them to make proper estimation for the product (Parente, 2006).

Small quantity, higher profit

The pricing strategy of Apple Inc. is so high. They produce a small quantity and their target customers are also little in size but they earn a higher profit as their product price is so high.

Premium quality makes confidence

The buyer of Apple product may be small in size but they are highly reliable to the company product for premium quality of the Apple product. Customers are highly satisfied with company product.

How responsibilities of marketing function relate to wider organizational context:

Manage marketing budgets

Marketing function manage budget for marketing department to run it both internal and external actives. Internal activities are including making marketing plan and strategy for the product and externals are implementation of the plan, market capture cost and others.

Calculate the ROI

Every business has their own investment and has estimation to return on that investment. Marketing function make the proper calculation on the investment that had done by the company. 30% of primary investment is recently done to produce an innovative product by the suggestion of marketing managers in order to capture market by Apple Inc. (A.G, 2003).

Define strategic marketing plans

The long term plans are cost effective in most case. The actions are to be under taken and that were done should be calculate to make an effective strategic marketing plan. Apple Inc. had made their strategic marketing plan as high price, premium quality which makes them different from others.

Innovate

Marketing function makes a company to be innovative by collecting information continuously about the needs and wants of the customers and makes the value of customer’s choice. Apple Inc. produced iPod which is as like as a smartphone but it is not a smartphone because it has no calling facility and its target customers are children. They had made this because they have enough information about children choice and their parent wants (Rajagopal, 2010).

These are the roles and responsibilities which Apple Inc. uses to make their organization wider in context and successfully implement all of their plans.

Task02:

Compare the ways in which different organization use marketing mix (7p’s) to the marketing planning process to achieve business objectives.

The marketing mix is well known marketing strategy tools which a company uses to make the plan for product, to distribute that product to the hand of the customer. In traditional marketing strategy their have 4p’s and they are product, place, promotion, and price. But in modern marketing strategy there have 3 additional marketing tools and they are people, process, and physical evidence (Sagmeister, 2011).

Figure2: 7p’s in marketing mix

Source: own creation

Company and marketer use this marketing mix as a tool to help to determine a product or brand offering. Now how the organizations are use marketing mix tool while their marketing planning is shown below.

Product

Product is any physical or visual things which a company offers to their customer in order to earn their profit. The product of Apple Inc. is iPhone, iPod, Apple watch and so on. On the other hand product of Samsung is TV, camera, smartphone, and features phone. Organizations offer these products to customer in order to gain their objectives.

While making plan for their product Apple keeps eye on the quality. Their motto is premium quality for a higher price. This is their market capture strategy and their target customers are higher class people of the society (Yeshin, 2006). On the other hand, Samsung make higher quality product for higher price as well as lower for capturing all portion of the market. This is their product strategy.

Place

Place strategy is from where product will be available for the target customers. Companies use different types of wholesaler, retailers to sell their product. Recent marketers also use e-commerce technique to sale the product.

Apple sells their product by different types of retailer like Walmart, best buy as physical place. They also use their app store a sales point of them. Customers of Apple also enable to buy their products from third party. On the other hand, Samsung use physical selling point in different country which are known as showroom of Samsung products.

Promotion

Promotional activities are including advertising, personal selling, public relations, sales promotions and so on. Organizations use promotional activities to attract customer and aware them about the product.

Apple generally uses their website as their promotional place from where customers are able to know about their existing and upcoming product. They also emphasizes on personal selling and advertising. Samsung use TVC to promote their product.

Price

Price is a very sensitive issue which generally comes from customer by accepting the product at a certain price. It is the return of all effort make by the organization.

Apple Inc. uses a higher price strategy to make larger profit. That’s why Apples products are relatively higher in price (kumara, 2010). Their target customers are higher class people who always deserve the quality. But Samsung make high quality product as well low to capture all portion of the market.

People

Peoples are considering the main element of all organization. They are customer as well as producer of the product.

Apple always recruits higher quality employee to produce premium quality product to satisfy other portion of the people who are known as customers. Samsung also follow this strategy but their product quality is not as good as Apple except some models (Micheal R Soloman, 2010).

Process

Process is delivery of company’s product to hand of the customer. That is related to how the customers will able to find the product.

Apple sometimes use home delivery service for their U.S.A customers in order make them more accessible to apple products. Samsung use their showroom service to reach their product.

Physical evidence

Every product should have physical evidence as well as services. A hair salon provides their client a complete hairdo as physical evidence and a insurance company provide printed form.

As Apple Inc. generally deals their business with physical products so their product is physical evidence of them such as iPhone, iPod, and Apple laptop. Samsung is also a business of physical products.

Task 03:

Produce and evaluate a basic marketing plan for your chosen organization to meet marketing goals and objectives.

Marketing plan for Apple

A marketing plan consists of several elements and they are given in the figure:

Figure03: Marketing plan for Apple

Source: own creation.

Marketing plan for Apple Inc. is given below.

Company Introduction

Apple is an American multinational company started with the industry of computer hardware, software, and market consumer electronics in April 01, 1976 which is known as Apple Inc. It was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak in Apple Campus Cupertino, California, America. The company is now world’s largest company by asset and revenue (P.R Smith, 2005).

Statement of Marketing Goal

The major segment for Apples product is rich people in any society who always deserve premium quality. Their main objective is to reach its product all over the world for telecommunication, personal computers and technology oriented products.

SWOT Analysis of Apple

Strength

• Company sales and products advanced technology which are premium in quality.

• Their development sector and research center is enough strong to innovate new ideas.

• Customers are reliable to the company for greater quality.

Weaknesses

• With the competition to Microsoft, market share of Apple starts to decline.

• The company doesn’t maintain its position, except from the education and publishing field.

Figure 04: SWOT of Apple

Source: own creation

Opportunities

• Apple can seek the attention of the people by introducing innovating features like glass smartphone.

• To survive in the market for long time Apple should maintain a greater communication with other companies.

Threats

• Strong competition is faced by Apple from Sony, Samsung, Huawei, and others.

• Apple’s price is too high to reach by middle or lower class customers.

Competitors Analysis

Apple has several types of products and their competitors also different for different product such as for smartphone their main competitors are Samsung and Huawei. In laptop market their competitors are Dell, Toshiba, and Gateway, in networking of airlines Casco and Net gear and so on.

Marketing Objectives

The major Marketing objective of Apple is to capture the higher class customers by providing greater quality of the product than others. Secondary objectives are to make reliable customer by providing greater service and differentiation in product. Another objective of Apple is to increase per year sales revenue in 20% (Perera, 2010).

Strategic Objective

Apple is working hard to make innovative ideas in their product concept to capture their lost portion of the market. Recently Samsung s7 is blasted in several pert of the world which make a positive image for iPhone 7 and so they trying to launch their new phone iPhone 8 as soon as possible.

Target Market Segmentation

Apples target market is the rich and upper class people of all over the world and the customers who always search for innovation. The most customers of Apple’s iPhone is college students of rich family. Apple should launch a part of their product targeting to middle class people to enlarge their market.

Apple Marketing Mix

Product as a technological product selling company Apple have a line of products like iPod, Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, iLife, iWork, iOS and Mac OS X.

Place to sale their product Apple has over 478 retail shops in U.S.A

Price Apple use penetration pricing strategy which says greater quality for a higher price.

Promotion Apple uses their website as their advertising media.

People Apple has 115,000 employees and a large set of reliable customers to buy their product.

Process Apple sometimes use home delivery services to make sure that customer reach the product.

Physical evidence they use several printed form for their invisible product.

Market Penetration

Apples major market is America, Japan, and Europe and now the Company is expanding their business in Canada, America, Japan, and UK.

Market Development

Apple has trying to enter in Asian market with a lower price product to expand their existing market. They also took some strategies to overtake Samsung and Huawei.

Financial summery

Apple is the first company who generated 700$ as the year of 2016. They are now world’s largest company in the view of asset, largest company in the point of revenue and second largest in smartphone manufacturing. They earn about 65.23 billion dollar in a year and earned 43$ billion in 2010.

Conclusion

Apple Inc. is a U.S.A based electronic product company. Their motto is to provide premium quality product to the customer. But their product price is so higher. Although it is their uniqueness but it is too high to purchase by other class of the society. They should consider some of their price to capture further part of the market. Apples products are not available in maximum part of the world including south Asian countries so they should make their product accessible by this part of the world. Some of the apples product has no innovative features like iPhone 7. But customers are pay the higher price to get innovative thing from apple. Apples customers are facing some common problems as like they cannot use app from other source except app store which makes them disloyal to the brand. App store is also a closed source of app which should make open as play store. IPhone7 have a new feature that is Bluetooth earphone but this earphone will not come along with the main product. It needs to be purchase from apple for huge amount of money which makes the buyer bored so apple should consider this.