Question

Who is the competition? Advertising that competition has used? Previous advertising efforts your client has undertaken? What level of thought does the customer have to go through to make the purchase? What does the customer journey look like right now? How can it be improved?

Answer 1

Introduction:-

In microeconomics, it is very important to know, the effects of competition and of various advertising methods and their effects on consumers buying decisions.

Demand estimation is possible only when these aspects have been clearly understood by the management of an organization. Advertising indeed has a positive impact and helps the consumer choose one product over the other, however generally speaking no industry is free from competitors deploying similar strategies that enable them to have a market share as well.

For the purpose of this case study, we evaluate Apple as a company and have described its components to answer the case.

Apple is a company based out of the United States and was started by the giant innovators Steve Wozniack and Jobs respectively. The company today is facing tough competition from the Chinese manufacturers and detailed answers are as follows.

Case Specifics

Who is the competition? Advertising that competition has used? Previous advertising efforts your client has undertaken?

The competition that apple faces, in the premium market segment is Samsung which is a South Korean company and has started to gain much of the market share because of its better offerings at a price point which seems more reasonable than paying for an Apple device respectively.

Over the years, Samsung's Advertising has been such that it has torn apart Apple products and have highlighted flaws in their design from the fact that most of the products are overpriced and are not the best at the same time. One can easily remember the mockery which Samsung made of the notch design.

Apple on its part has highlighted the superior design and quality of products and the ease of use. The advertising has been simple and everyone can recognize the simple lines of “If you don't have an IPhone you don't have an IPhone" in this the client i.e. Apple has been able to reach out to the consumers correctly previously.

What level of thought does the customer have to go through to make the purchase? What does the customer journey look like right now? How can it be improved?

Over the years, customers have associated themselves with an idea that Apple as a product is more advanced and the purchase decision involves in them selecting a product that offers a premium over others. It has become a status symbol and the purchase decision does not consider cost as the most important factor but rather the entire ecosystem which apple offers.

Over the years however, Samsung and other brands have offered similar and at times more value for money options which Apple has been unable to cater to.

Therefore, in my opinion this is the foremost factor which is stopping more customer retention for the company at this point. The customer journey must be molded in a way that the company can offer higher customer satisfaction for the money which they pay, and at the same time the demand for the products can be realized which is clearly not happening at this point of time. The customer journey can be enhanced with the company realizing that offering a product which is pricy without any addition of features which competitors are already offering will only make it a big failure towards where it is already headed respectively.

Please feel free to ask your doubts in the comments section.