This paper presents a marketing audit of Apple Inc., one of the world's largest technology companies. Using the PESTE framework, the paper analyzes the macro-environmental factors influencing Apple's marketing operations across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Key areas examined include demographic trends in smartphone and tablet adoption, political and regulatory conditions affecting corporate taxation and product safety, economic growth patterns across Apple's major markets, technological innovation driving R&D investment, cultural influences on consumer preferences, and environmental sustainability challenges. The paper concludes with context for improving Apple's marketing effectiveness in an increasingly competitive global landscape against rivals such as Samsung, Dell, Microsoft, and Lenovo.
Apple Inc. is an American multinational company specializing in the production and marketing of innovative electronic products, including the iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac, and iOS. Globally, Apple is the second-largest information technology company, with annual revenue of $227.5 billion at the end of the 2015 fiscal year. Apart from its superior financial assets, the company also enjoys high brand loyalty across all its product lines. Apple also records unparalleled market success in iTunes software and digital music players.
At present, Apple distributes and markets its products through online and retail stores, which helped the company generate annual profits of more than $53 billion at the end of the 2015 fiscal year. Despite this financial success, Apple continues to face stiff competition in global market environments, since it operates in both developed and developing countries. In the United States and in European countries, many electronics companies compete fiercely with Apple. Currently, Apple faces competition from large multinational electronics producers including Samsung, Dell, Microsoft, HP, Lenovo, LG, Google, Nokia, and IBM (O'Grady, 2009).
A highly competitive environment compels Apple to intensify its high-tech product development in order to maintain a leading position in the market. HP and Dell are ahead of Apple in portable and desktop computers in both the United States and globally. Furthermore, Apple faces fierce competition from heavyweight computer manufacturers such as Lenovo, Acer, and Asus. In 2015, Apple ranked fifth in global market share for computers (Conn, 2016). Faced with these competitive pressures, Apple needs to recapture market share in order to record profitable returns across its computer and other product lines.
The objective of this report is to apply critical thinking skills to a marketing audit of Apple Inc. Specifically, the report scans both the external and internal environments in which Apple operates and provides recommendations that can assist the marketing department in improving the effectiveness of its current marketing strategies.
This paper relies on secondary sources drawn from various published research papers to analyze both the external and internal environments, using the macro environment audit, task environment audit, marketing function audit, and strategy audit (Vana & Cerna, 2012).
Apple is influenced by macro-environmental forces that shape the economic, political, technological, and social contexts in which it operates. The PESTE model has been identified as the most appropriate framework for enumerating the external factors that influence Apple's marketing operations.
Advances in technological development have given billions of people across the globe access to the internet, and this dramatic increase in connectivity has driven demand for laptops, computers, tablets, e-books, and cell phones. According to the 2012 census, the United States population was estimated at 314,440,891, and over 110 million people in the United States owned smartphones. Consumers between the ages of 18 and 34 used mobile phones to access the internet in 2014, and that figure is presumed to increase year by year. Additionally, tablet users reached 89.5 million in 2015, representing a more than 35.6% increase between 2014 and 2015. The number of young people with access to mobile phones is also rising; in 2010, six out of ten children aged between three and seven years had internet access at home, a figure increasing by more than 50% year after year.
An overview of gender ratios shows that 51% of smartphone users are male and 49% are female. Additionally, 39% of people aged between 18 and 34 used smartphones, compared with 48% of those aged between 35 and 54, and 13% of consumers above 55 (eMarketer, 2016). According to eMarketer's (2016) forecast, over two billion people worldwide would use smartphones by 2016, representing an increase of 12.6% between 2015 and 2016. By December 2016, over 2.15 billion people — one quarter of the world's population — would have access to smartphones, with China topping the figures at 624.7 million smartphone users, followed by the United States with 198.5 million (eMarketer, 2016). By 2018, over 2.5 billion people were projected to own smartphones globally. These demographic statistics demonstrate that Apple will continue to enjoy market advantages as demand for smartphones grows across all age groups.
"Tax policy, regulations, and market revenues"
"R&D investment and consumer taste influences"
"Energy costs and carbon footprint reduction"
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