Customer segmentation and target market identification for product positioning

iPhone 4s is a recipient of a number of decades of successful Apple marketing savvy. The iPhone smart phone has revolutionized the smart phone market with a number of innovative features. In addition, the price makes it very competitive with the other brands. As we will see in this short presentation, carefully segmented and targeted marketing in the U.S. And U.K markets should preserve the market that the product already has and allow it to gain on its rivals.

Target Market

The target marketing will be similar to the marketing for Apple iPHONE products in the past. The iPhone 4s will likely be strong in the U.S. And in the U.K., as iPhones in general are doing now. However, they have recently been falling off in sales in Europe. This is due to Google's Android platform which has made gains due to low-priced. For instance, Apple saw its smart phone market share drop from 29 to 20% in France, 27 to 22% in Germany and steep drops in Italy and Spain. The iPhone 4s has been affected by weak economies Europe while the Android accounts for some 46 to 61% in all European markets (Oliver, 2011). Therefore, in the opinion of this team member, the target market will like be heavily in the U.S. And U.K. While things have been more positive in the U.S. And U.K., the Apple company should not rest on its laurels.

According to an article by Ellis Hamburger, Windows Phone will beat iPhone in market share in 2015. The article in Business Insider also predicted a giant increase in market share for iPhone rival Nokia Lumia 900. Additionally in 2015, Android will have 58.1% market share (Hamburger, 2012). This is certainly a very dim view of the iPhone 4s market, but is this prediction correct?

Scarcity Marketing Strategy

A very specific target market, which is measurable, accessible, sustainable, differentiable, and actionable is the scarcity market that is created by the impending release of new iPhone models to the market. There is quite a hype about the soon to be available phone (in this case the unreleased iPhone5) which seems to feed sales of the present iPhone4S. Even though there are not enough iPhone4S phones for the market, people seem to be willing to make orders anyway. Apple has always been a master of scarcity marketing. For instance six days after Apple publicly announced their iPhone 4S, customers ordered a record one million pre-orders within the first 24 hours. During he first weekend, sales topped 4 million units. More than 75% of Apple stores sold out the iPhone 4S on Black Friday (Valdez, 2011).

The current customer base has been thoroughly researched as to buyer behavior, demographics, psychographics, lifestyle, geographic area, benefit segmentation and also user segmentation for the product or service. Despite the naysayers, 4 million unit U.S. sales would seem to indicate that the iPhone4s will have a very happy future. This market according to some recent intelligence from Apple indicates that education is a big market (as in the past).which mean that the buyer behavior will reflect that of the college student who is purchasing their textbooks as ebooks online. This would indicate a young demographic and lifestyle in terms of market segmentation. The economics are really rather simple as well, as textbooks cost a lot of money. This student demographic attracted by the ease of use with ebooks is also interested in features such as voice-activiated Siri messaging, an 8MP camera with new optics and a number of other features. They see the benefits as being especially segmented toward their market, the young, technologically savvy generation in their young twenties who while on a student budget still have access to money from various sources. This has also involved marketing the iPhone 4s at only $199 per unit ("Apple marketing and," 2012). Certainly, the student market is very measurable, accessible, sustainable, differentiable by adding and customizing features to the phone and actionable in drawing them to by new versions using the traditional Apple strategy of scarcity marketing.

Total Marketing Budget Estimate

As seen above, the market was 4 million units bought during the time surrounding Black Friday with another 1 million on back order. This would certainly make at least a market share of 5 million units during the rest of 2012 and conservative figure. Given the 5 million benchmark figure, this would make the marketing budget for 2012 approximately $500,000.

Estimate the Size of the Market and the Estimated Penetration Percentage