Marketing approaches for tablet PCs: Apple's value strategy versus HP's four Ps focus

Marketing

Comparing and Contrasting the

Ps of Marketing vs. The Value Approach

The traditional marketing mix is defined as the 4 Ps, including product, price, promotion and place or distribution. These elements of the marketing mix have widely been considered the foundation of marketing strategies, yet lacking in defining how value is delivered is to customers. The value approach that includes the cycle of creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging value is in use with many companies to overcome the limitations of the 4Ps. The intent of this analysis is to compare and contrast the 4 Ps approach to marketing vs. The value approach.

The Marketing of a New Tablet PC

Using the example of tablet PCs, it is clear how different these approaches to marketing can be. Apple chose a value approach in launching their initial iPad product family and continually reinforce this messaging today, concentrating on the customer experience over product and price alone. Many Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) require marketing to deliver on the goals of increasing the customer satisfaction levels of a new product, including the improvement of customer loyalty, all centered on the creating, communicating and delivering of value (Kotler, 2004). Value is what galvanizes the Apple iPad marketing strategy together. While Apple selectively uses each aspect of the 4 Ps to support its value messaging, the 4 Ps are not necessarily the foundational elements of its marketing strategy. They are supporting factors to the main marketing message of delivering and exceptional customer experience, one that is highly valued by the customer.

In contrast, the launch of a tablet PC by Hewlett-Packard and its eventual cancellation as a product shows what happens when a marketer chooses to focus first just on the 4Ps and heavily skews marketing messaging to just features. HP is a very engineering-centric company and prides itself on its analytics expertise. This pervades how they use the 4 Ps to communicate product features and benefits. Rarely will HP break out of the 4Ps and show the customer experience above all, as the product mindset is so strong they concentrate on that.