Ch7- Business marketing

Nowadays, Apple products are used so frequently, not only for personal use, but also for business. 

 iPad is used in so many ways in business. For example, we can use iPad as a sales brochure, instead of using a brochure made of paper, we use the iPad. With the iPad you can have all of your company's products and services in the palm of your hand, whenever and wherever you go. And also you can access your company email from your iPad or iPhone.

Macs are used by most of successful companies and also by the employees especially when they started to bring their own devices. More than 2 out of 5 of 10000 surveyed employees use one of more Apple device at work. 

Apple is now a part of the business world. iMacs and laptops are used by producers, pilots. iPads are used in business meetings interviews. iPhones are used in stores like macys to check prices of make payments. 

Ch. 8 - Segmenting and Targeting Markets

Apple's target market is everyone willing to spend a little extra money for something more sophisticated .  But to be more specific about which target market, they need to analyse and break down the market into segmentations. There are four bases for segmenting consumer markets : Geographic, demographic, psychographic and behavioral segmentation.

Geographic segmentation is dividing the market by regions cities or the density or the climate.

Apple  focuses on users of all type of demographic group and market. Apple lets users decide how and where they'll use its products. Most importantly Apple target to the most creative and liberal people that love innovative, high-tech new products. 

Demographic segmentation is based on age, sex,family life cycle, income,education and nationality. 

Apple products can be used by everyone and at every age. The app store has some games for kids and even apps with songs for babies. Apple products are good for teenagers, students, firms etc.. 

Psychographic segmentation is based on socioeconomic status, values, attitudes and personality.

Apple used psychographic segmentation in the case of the iPad2 Apple takes in to consideration  the socioeconomic status lifestyle and personality variables of its consumers. 

Ch. 11 - Developing and Managing Products

Apple is clearly one of the most innovative firms in the world. They have a new product every few months. Innovation is the key to new product devlopment and Apple has it nailed. Apple is a company that keeps coming ou with new ideas o how to make their products better and more efficient. The first iPod was introduced in 2001 and after that apple came out with 24 more models, one better than the model before. they also came out with 4 iPads generation and 2 mini iPads and 8 iPhones.

The Apple new product strategy is put in action once the product is designed and talked about. Its a document that sets every step in the devlopment process of a product in detail. This concept was first applied at the company when the macintosh was developed; It's not an original apple concept. its shows the objectives of the marketing department, the business  unit and the corporation.
Apple's team meets every monday to go over the New product and discuss it.

Ch. 18 -Social Media and Marketing

Social media is a tool or service that uses the internet to facilitate conversations. Social media is one of the top source of marketing for any kind of business. the larger your company is, the more marketing you start to need in order to grow demand. There are many brands that do not have social media such as Apple inc.
Apple is one of the most successful companies and has absolutely no social media. Apple do not have any official Facebook page and only a 55 tweets on twitter account, avoiding social media. but consumers are still searching for them on the net,there are millions of consumers liking their pages on facebook and following them on twitter, on hundreds of unofficial accounts. We can say that Apple's social media strategy is to create great and good products and letting people talking about them to each other. consumers go in person to the apple store or Bestbuy just to touch the new iPad or iPhone 5S. Maybe apple think they are too successful for using scoial  media, they are using the good old business saying of " why fix it if it's not broken " .

Ch 10- product concept

Apple made the first major change in its product mix in 2001, by introducing the iPod. Apple was taking a huge risk by extending its brand to the portable music player category, but this change allowed apple to reach a completely segment of consumers. Apple took this opportunity  to transform these new consumers into mac consumers by making them into the iTunes system. Ipod users need to have music on their devices, and to have music they need a computer. Itunes and Macs were the perfect support products. The iPod was a huge hit for Apple this year, and in the same year apple opened its. First retail store to improve its distribution strategy. As the company knew a Huge success with both the iPod and iMacs and MacBooks, it's product line began to expand. The introduced the iPod mini followed by iPod nano and shuffle. In addition, the brand was extended with introducing further products such as the Apple TV, iPhones and recently the iPads. 




Products are what's makes a business. Concept of products determines how successful a business can be financially. Business product and consumer product are two types of product concept. The consumer product best describes Apple because they are made to satisfy costumers needs and wants for example : the MacBook, iPod, iPhone and iPad, they are all for personal use. 
When Apple came out with the iPad, that product in itself was a specialty product because no other company was selling a device like the iPad. I think the iPhone belongs to the shopping product because buyers are comparing it with other phones before buying it and also the iPhone is more expensive than the other phones. 

Ch. 17 - Personal Selling and Sales Management

Personal selling is the act of using people to sell products to consmers face-to-face. Apple's sales representatives are very well trained in both customer service and product information. Apple has a new product every few months, so it is important for those sales representative to be up to date about the latest technologies entering the market. Those sales representative are generally within the generation X or Y age range, so they grew up in this technology era and they are already familiar with it.
It is important that the sales representative offer excellent customer service. they should be able to explain this technology to consumers who are not exposed to it and want suddenly to obtain this knowledge. They should be able to make the transition from "old world" to " new world"easy for those consumers. These methods help increasing sales and a trusting and reputable image for apple.

Ch. 16 - Advertising, Public Relations and Sales Promotion

Apple Inc has become very famous for its advertisements since 1980s. 
Its most significant ad campaigns include the super bowl commercial in 1984, the 1990s The think different campaign, and the "iPod people" of the 2000s.

The "think different" campaign is 

one of the most successful campaigns in the history of advertising.During the 90's, Apple was in a crisis and with only one campaign, they were doing better. The campaign consisted of two main parts : the black and white television commercial and a print campaign. 

Steve Jobs said: “It only took 15 . . . 30 . . . maybe 60 seconds to re-establish Apple’s counter-culture image that it had lost during the 90s”.

When it comes to sales promotion, apple knows best. Apple uses short-term techniques to persuade their target market to buy their products. Some examples of promotion sales are : the money back guarantees, rebates etc. The apple stores are very distinct and captivating because they expose all their products for consumers and they allow them for example to surf on the web from any computer or lister to music on ipods and experience the iPhone and its features. This lets consumers to be more comfortable with the product and familiarize themselves with them. 

Another example of Sales promotion is when college students buy the Macbook during summer they can get any free iPod they want and a free printer. This promotion will highly increase the sales of the Macbooks. When you purchase a concet ticket through Ticketmaster, you can purchase the corresponding artist's album for $1 off the iTunes Store price.