Apple Inc.'s B2B market segmentation and marketing information systems

Apple iWatch

B2B marketing

Producers

These are companies that purchase products and services that they make over into other products. This B2B encompasses manufacturers as well as service providers. In this case, one very good example of a producer is FoxConn Technologies. FoxConn is a company based in Taiwan and is the largest contract manufacturer for Apple. In particular, Apple Inc. would be a good target market for the company as it would be able to use its innovation and novelty to produce better products. More so, the two companies are centered in the same business industry and therefore have substitute products. This would make Apple Inc. an ideal target market.

This is part of the B2B markets and Apple Inc. can certainly be a target market. These institutional markets consist of organizations, churches, colleges, hospitals and the like. Apple Inc. would be deemed a target market for such institutions, as they would employ the innovation and novelty of the company to greater use. This will be largely beneficial for institutions as they would be able to increase their services to the society (Sandhusen, 2008).

Marketing Information Systems

Marketing information encompasses all actualities, approximations, opinions and other information employed in marketing decisions, which influence the marketing of products and services. In this case, there are types of information that Apple Inc. ought to use in an extensive marketing information system for decision-making purposes.

i. Internal Records

Marketing managers can enthusiastically access and apply information in the database to ascertain marketing prospects and difficulties, plan agendas, and appraise performance. In addition, internal records typically can be retrieved more swiftly and economically than other information (Ismail, 2011).

ii. Marketing Intelligences

The marketing managers are able to scrutinize this information from the financial and business setting, so that they can employ it in their decision making. This information makes it possible to completely replicate the everyday situation of the business, in addition to supporting more operational, informed decisions (Ismail, 2011).

iii. Marketing Research

This is information that connects the consumer, customer, and the public to the marketer; it is employed to ascertain and describe marketing prospects and difficulties. This will enable the organization to identify and solve marketing issues (Ismail, 2011).

Marketing Metrics

One financial metric that can help the company to measure its strategic planning is return on assets. This encompasses the return the company is able to generate from utilizing its resources, and comes in the form of total assets. There are performance metrics that would be significant to monitor the company's strategic marketing planning. To start with, there is the marketing return on investment (ROI), which measures the amount of revenue that is generated by a certain marketing campaign in comparison to the cost that was incurred in undertaking that particular campaign. Basically, this metric will measure whether the company is regaining the cash lost, while implementing the marketing campaigns. Another metric is increased sales (Klipfolio, 2015). This particular marketing metric is indicative of the impact of the company's marketing determinations to increase the sales revenue generated. It shows the immediate link between sales and marketing, and how it helps an organization. The third metric comes in the form of web traffic sources. This will enable the company to gain an understanding of what particular traffic sources were driving visitors to purchase the iWatch and Apple products from the online Apple store (Klipfolio, 2015).