APPLE'S MARKETING ORIENTATION

Apple's Marketing Orientation

Table of Contents

Marketing Orientation …………………………………………………………………………….1

Apple's Market Orientation1

Building Competitive Advantage2

Apple's Competitive Advantage3

Benefits of Building Customer Satisfaction4

Customer Satisfaction at Apple4

Desired Quality of Products at Apple4

Service & Customer Care at Apple5

Relationship Marketing at Apple5

Customer Retention6

Customer Retention at Apple7

Customer Profitability8

Apple's Customer Profitability8

Costs of a too Narrow Marketing Focus8

References10The Benefits and Costs of a Marketing Orientation

Marketing Orientation

Marketing orientation customizes the product to be as per customer needs and wants (Anonymous, n.d.). It is also known as consumer focus. There are three steps to becoming marketing oriented:

Research and identify customer needs and wants.

Study the research results and create new products.

Introduce the product and create public awareness to achieve customer satisfaction.

There are certain characteristics that are present in a marketing oriented company:

Thorough and Efficient use of market research.

Development of new products/brands.

After sales service (delivery, installation, warranty, etc.)

A few alternative approaches to marketing orientation include product orientation, sales orientation and production orientation. (Inc., 2009)

Apple's Market Orientation

Apple, Inc. is both product oriented and market oriented. It can be labeled as product oriented because it focuses on the quality of its products and uses innovation to break into new market segments. Apple makes sure that the products have a competitive advantage over all the other similar products in the market. They make products with attractive features which capture the market. The products that the company produce are highly innovative. The company utilizes the strengths and capabilities of its teams in creating products that are highly innovative and of a very high quality.

It can be termed as market oriented because it makes extensive use of market research to continuously develop and improve its products and also because it uses innovation not only in the product quality but also in the sense of coming up with new products like its Ipad. Apple has a very strong orientation towards customers. They make sure that the customers are served in the best possible ways and thorugh highly innovative products. They also make sure that the they maintain a string orientation towards competitors and competition. It is the leading technology company of the world. The company makes sure that it creates market for its products by introducing innovative products.

Building Competitive Advantage

Competitive Advantage or competitive edge is a business's core quality that differentiates it from its competitors. It could be gained by setting lower prices from its competing products or by differentiating its products from competitors' products.

Building a competitive advantage ensures competitiveness but to stay on top a company must be able to retain the edge it has achieved. This means sustaining the competitive advantage in the face of constant change. This is imperative for the success of a business in the long run.

Competitive advantage is divided into three categories: (Lamb, Hair, & McDaniel, 2011)

Cost leadership

As the name implies, the company becomes a leader in cutting down its costs of manufacturing the product. This can be done by various methods such as purchasing economical raw materials, having efficient manufacturing operations, etc.

Differentiation

Differentiation is done to set the product apart from its rival's ...