Further Thought on Apple’s Legal Troubles (Re: Jonathan Bickford)
This post is a reply to “Re: Apple’s Legal Troubles” on Jonathan Bickford’s blog.
Reading Jonathan’s response to my post about Apple’s legal woes caused me to rethink some of my positions and my stance on the issue. Given the negative public image and controversy surrounding Apple’s legal actions, my earlier statement that “a negative corporate image is never good for profits” seems to be on less solid ground.
As Jonathan pointed out with his Nike example, even though negative publicity and media attention surfaced about its conduct, it remained a very popular company. Likewise, the same can be said about Apple. It’s iPods, iPads, iPhones, and Macs are still extremely popular (one could prove this just by looking around the room in our lecture), even with the negative media.
So what causes consumers to buy products? Sure, the company’s image might factor in, but clearly, it’s not the major factor, and it may not even be a significant one for most people. I’ve come to the fairly simpler conclusion that people purchase products for their functionality, a seemingly obvious statement.
Then what are the implications with respect to the Apple’s legal issues? I’ve opened up to the possibility that since consumers purchase products because of functionality, especially technological products, for a large company like Apple, publicity is still publicity, no matter how negative it is. And if Apple is devoting so much of its time pursuing what many see as trivial cases, could this all be some twisted, evil marketing scheme? These issues are getting us to talk about Apple, and thus, the company and their products are still in our consciousness.
An amusing take on Apple’s ‘evil empire’.