Marketing mix first found and used by Neil Borden in 1953 when he gave a speech at the American Marketing Association, since it had been widely used until Jerome McCarthy (1964) redefined theory to official 4P(Product, Price, Promotion, Place). Marketing mix is a combination of 4 cores element which business has to analyze in order to bring the Right Product to the Right customers, at the Right time in the Right place. These four elements are adjusted and related to each other to create the perfect marketing campaign for the product that serve the customer expectation. Apple is one of the most premier global companies that pride itself on creativity and innovation and one of the key to this succeed is creating successful marketing mix.Apple was found in 1957 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne specialize in computing and computer related. Apple has started to invest in smartphone since 2007, they official launch Iphone in July 20007 and continue to upgrade their smart sine then to the current version which is the Iphone 5.
Even though the ideas of touchscreen smartphone was not originally from apple, however, Iphone was the first company which create the most successful touchscreen smart phone in industry. (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/02/if-android-is-a-stolen-product-then-so-was-the-iphone/)This essay will discuss about marketing mix, 4 cores concept involves Product, Price, Promotion, Place and how multinational company Apple Inc. applied marketing mix strategies on their smartphones- Iphone 5, the latest version which launch in 12th of september. First will go further in each key concept, describe the strength and weakness, then evaluate and comparing Apple’s marketing mix with its closure company, Samsung.
Although, Apple’s success is doubtless due to the innovative and creativity of the phone itself, the essay will concludes that, without a carefully crafted marketing plan and the loyalty of Apple customers, it would be safe to assume the iPhone would not have achieved the level of success that it has.Apple target main 4 customer segment: Business, creativity professional, education and high-end costumer (Dr. John Ashcroft). Apple aims to please loyalty customer, in another word, Apple make sure once customers use their product, they willing to coming back and continue using their product in long term. Apple’s signature is high advanced and innovative yet easy to use product.
The first fundamental concept that I will analyze is Product. Apple has launch successfully Iphone 5 on 12th of September 2012. The smartphone consists of Branding, Design, Quality, Features, Services, and Insurances. Apple make sure it cover all needed factor to create the perfect Product and its packing to customers.According to Phil Schiller - Apple's vice president of worldwide marketing, who unveiled the device - said compare to the old version, which is Iphone 4, Iphone five considered to be faster as they use A6 chip instead of A5, Mr. Schiller suggested ‘’this made it twice as powerful as the earlier model’’.
Iphone also are thinner and lighter in shape. Iphone 5 Height 4.87 inches, Width 2.31 inches, Depth 0.30 inches and Weight 112 grams while iPhone 4 Height 5 inches, Width 2.31 inches, Depth 0.
37 inches Weight 140 grams. The display also improved from 3.5-inch Retina display 960x640 resolution to 4-inch (diagonal) Retina display, 1136x640 resolution.Another significant new feature is Sims card as Iphone does Nano Sims and does not applied micro Sims like the old version, not only using different Sims card, Iphone 5 also improve on battery life and change the connectors to be smaller and more convenient. Apple, after all, has done a great job so far on upgrading the Iphone to the higher level of high technology.
However, according to BBC news, Roy Cellan-Jones, there were so many leaks in the new Smartphones, which fail the customer expectation. Even though Iphone 5 has better camera, costumer found Iphone 5 leak many feature that its biggest rival offer, Samsung galaxy 3 let their user use micro SD cards and the micro USB standard Unlike the iPhone, the Samsung doesn't rely on sync software to transfer files directly either, customers can drag and drop files when plugged into a computer over USB.There are also extra memory card offer in Samsung galaxy so customer can increase the capacity himself or herself while Apple use Capacity as a price strategy. This makes a big competitive advantage for Samsung win over Apple in sale revenue.
Another weakness in Apple Iphone is non removable battery, Samsung offer customer a removable battery which they can change the battery when the current one is run out without carrying the charger around as Iphone 5. Another issue on Iphone battery charger is apple changes the connector so it is not compactible with other Apple product such as Ipad, Ipod , somehow create inconvenient to customers as they have to carry different charger around.
