Apple Inc.'s product life cycle and competitive positioning strategy

Apple Inc. Organization's Product Life Cycle

Samsung, Google, and Microsoft are the three predominant competitors for Apple Inc. These giant firms are fundamentally auspicious in making Apple Inc. lose its market share. They are utilizing price competition methodologies and more current and quick line expansions. The rivalry is exceptionally extreme because of current players and the presence of substitutes, which have the capacity to snatch ten percent of the market share of the overall industry (Melnyk & Narasimhan, 2010). The explanation for such solid rivalry from substitutes is the low switching expenses of the clients. This is because they can effectively shift from one brand name onto the next by being attracted to lower commodity prices.

Clearly, these alternative brands do not charge premium costs like that of Apple's branded items. The organization confronts the threat of new entrants in the business sector. In any case, the industry requires high venture for research and development, which is challenging new entrants to penetrate in the market. This makes it troublesome for the new players to have a successful product improvement. Production, the distribution and marketing activities also requires overwhelming investment to break the disorder of rivals in the business and influence purchasers to buy their item (Shaw, 2011).

The internal settings consider the targets, business techniques intended to meet those objectives, product life cycle, and recognize the qualities and shortcomings of the organization. The goal of Apple Inc. is to keep being the market leader in providing innovative items and sustain its long-term growth in sales and profits. The strategies, which the company devises to achieve the objective mainly, incorporate decrease in expense structure and expand its branding image to introduce current items. The product marketing methods that they embrace incorporate product line diversification, developing product advancement and adopt approaches to improve markets in order to uphold their worldwide position (Bacon & Bacon, 2008).

The greatest strength is the extreme brand recognition and biggest market share across the industry. However, they have not dependably been quick to client price sensitivity and henceforth have experience moderate erosions in their sales. The greater part of organization's items are either at maturity or growth phase as Apple Inc. plans to broaden and offer product extension to the market. Apple's distribution objective is to have compelling distribution with the goal that the rivalry does not replace it in the event of non-availability. Eighty percent of the distribution centers are stores where wholesalers or retailers buy the products (McQuarrie, 2009).

Apple Inc. has embraced a stubborn attitude towards price change of Samsung's offerings. This is despite how rivalry and private labels are grabbing the market share mostly because of low priced items. It suffers because it committed the error of considering its cost of research and development while setting prices and expected that the clients will adhere to the brand. It has always been the last to change the prices according to the rivalry. This is regardless of having most products in the maturity phase where competitive pricing must be the principal adopted strategy. The organization's approach of charging premium pricing to being the leader in the market can procure them benefits in the short run at the expense of clients. However, the long run influence of such a strategy is detrimental to the organization's health.

In the context of the cutthroat rivalry from the established companies such as Google and Dell and enormous price sensitivity of consumers, Apple Inc. must design a competitive pricing strategy to set prices that are closer to the consumer. However, the company might not beat the prices offered by rivals as their cost of business operation is much lower than Apple's thus, in this light, the management ought to adopt aggressive advertising tools to increase Apple's awareness sin the market. Such a psychological impact can enable Apple regain its lost share of the market (Melnyk & Narasimhan, 2010).

Q2

Customers: The client base of iPod was initially teenagers, travelers, and students. The desire to have technically, better, and advanced products characterizes the market. These items must have cool image and more features that it portrays to the users. The buying decision is not random, but planned through gathering of information because such products are not bought every day (Bacon & Bacon, 2008).

Competition: The main rivals include incorporate Samsung, Google, and Microsoft that handle convenient MP3 players. The rivalry is most likely wild because competitors can depend on two principal components, high price sensitivity by consumers and steady innovation. However, iPod's reputation in the business sector is immovable and a large portion of customers in portable music devices end up purchasing iPod. The competitors can exploit rapid product development and line extensions thus iPod needs to stay ahead regarding innovation (Shaw, 2011). Since it is a high-tech industry, the capacity of new players to give rivalry is exceptionally low because of the high fixed cost used in research and development. This makes them unable to acquire a position in the minds of consumers. Buyers have a tendency to seek for variety and competitors advertise to establish a commanding brand image. Therefore, iPod has an advantage as it has positioned itself as trendy and cool among its target market.

Distribution: The Apple iPod is made to be accessible at all the store and hypermarkets. The shelf replacement rivalry is exceptionally high in these items. The item being the market leader does not need to make its presence felt (McQuarrie, 2009). However, it should as well guard its position by extensive channels of distribution, so the item does not get out of sight and out of the brain. The distribution techniques are made and adhered to for a considerable period since it is not a fast moving consumer commodity. The way to triumph in distribution procedures seems to be available at each spot where the rivalry is available (Melnyk & Narasimhan, 2010). Apple like other numerous organizations in the electronics business has supply chain network with a high-risk profile. Most of its key parts hail from northern Taiwan the organization sole sources customized components. It depends on enormous processing plants spotted in China for final assembly. Any natural disaster or fabricated fiasco at any of these locations may possibly grind Apple's chain of supply to a stop.

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The pricing technique that has been embraced by the organization was business skimming. This implies that the item is deliberately situated to have higher costs. This is with the prime intention that those individuals who are eager to purchase it will help the item gain revenue. At this phase of product maturity, the item might as well have aggressive pricing, so customers do not move to items with cheaper costs. In this respect, it is vital to remember that the cost may as well additionally concentrate on the psychological component of the buying decision. In the event that the costs of iPod will be kept at the same level of cheap items, then most people will perceive the nature of iPod to have diminished (Bacon & Bacon, 2008). iPod must make its buyers feel that they are paying a reasonable cost for the quality they appropriate. Besides, iPod is a market leader, but it might also generate varieties in the product line with the intention that the competitors will not take away the market share. It needs to safeguard its market leadership position. Finally, iPod has lost its sales because of I-phone and the organization should make measures make stark differentiation in both items through promoting so that the brand of iPod is not harmed (DeGeyndt, 2009).

Q3

Total Quality Management (TQM) offers tools that help organizations such as Apple to recognize analyze and assess quantitative and qualitative data relevant to the business. These instruments can recognize strategies, plans, statistics, ideas, cause and effect concerns and different issues significant to the organization. Each of which could be inspected and used to improve the standardization, efficiency, effectiveness and overall quality of product, procedures and work environment as per ISO 9000 benchmarks. Consistent with Quality America Inc. The amount of TQM tools is approximately 100. These tools come in different structures like diagrams, graphs, checklists, and focus group (Kehoe & Jarvis, 2010). In this case, the suitable tool would be Pareto Charts, which will help Apple to assimilate complex information pertaining to the following factors.

1) Identification of its target audience

2) Assessment of client necessities

3) Analyzing completion and

Quantitative Forecasting method

Market Growth: While it is impossible for Apple to measure market growth directly, the company can make intelligent guesses about them. First, in the event that Apple is searching at the business sector for tractors, they could say that global sales will doubtlessly expand in future as developed nations continue to need to rebuild their ageing infrastructure. On the other hand, third world nations are expanding their infrastructure with the intention of accommodating the rising middle class. For example, Apple could conservatively guess that because of the aforementioned market factors, the market is subject to grow at a positive GDP. This implies that the number of tractors could increase at an estimated five percent (DeGeyndt, 2009). Therefore, Apple could guess with a decent certainty that its overall sales could increase by five percent. It will be irresponsible for Apple to make investment a ten percent market growth.

Qualitative Forecasting method

Competitive Advantages: Apple enjoys high equity returns and a remarkable share of the market. Therefore, for such a firm, to improve its share of the market, it demands a competitive advantage. This means that Apple must have something that bars new entrants or rivals from stealing its customers. Absence of a competitive advantage implies that rivals will have the ease to undercut the company and snatch its market share, clientele, and earnings. There are different forms of competitive advantage: demand side advantage and supply side advantage (Daft, 2010).