Yizhuang Guo's Blog

My last blog deeply reflected my feelings toward Steve Jobs’ death, and a brief description of his achievements (although
everyone would know). However, I have never actually looked inside the marketing mix of Apple Inc. However, I read a classmate’s blog “Big Apple” by Jiayao Guo, I finally got a chance to have a deeper understanding of Apple’s business.

Beginning with the product, the “thing” that really helped Apple to come back from the cliff was ipod. To me, it is still a mystery why so many people would like ipod that much, since there are so many other good MP3 players that are more powerful, has better sound quality, etc. However, I thought one possibility is that since product is designed to solve customers’ problems, a simple and concise little ipod is all that customers need to listen to music. From the first ipod generation to today’s ipod-touch and ipod-nano, the ipod family has evolved a lot of times, yet still dominating the MP3 market, by doing enough to “solve customers’ problems”.

As for price, when ipod was first introduced, of course Apple would set the price low to attract customers, but not that low that it couldn’t cover its cost. As a result, the price was easily accepted by customers in consideration of its design and functions. Right now, for iphones, ipods, macbooks, ipads…Apple could set a somewhat monopoly price for customers since the company has already build a strong relationship with customers, and can even ignore the other competitors.

There are currently 3 Apple stores in Vancouver, excluding other retailers (like UBC bookstore) that sell Apple products, so the place isn’t really a problem for the company. Also considering Apple users are very loyal, so they will buy their products either from stores or online. Mobile phone service companies such as Rogers and Bell provide special contracts for iphones and plans, and such promotions benefit both Apple and the Mobile service company.

Giving the chance to look deeper into their strategies, it reinforced my idea that Apple will continue to play a big role in the technology market in the future, at least for our generation.

reference: https://blogs.ubc.ca/guojiayao/2011/11/07/big-apple/

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