Analysis of apple and the ipod shuffle
Business homework for the weekend. I am not sure if i did this right exactly, but hope to fund out monday morning from the teacher. Apple is one of my favorite business’s.
Analysis of the Ipod Shuffle.
I have chosen an organization/company called Apple and their product is the ipod shuffle.To analyse any product one has to do find who your target market is, do a marketing mix analysis and a SWOT analysis at the very least.
Apples target market for the ipod shuffle is obviously sporty, healthy and athletic people, this is obvious because of their promotional ad’s which are on their web site.
http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/guidedtour/
Apple use differentiated marketing strategy as they have a wide variety of ipods. They target each ipod as a different product according to four main subjects. Any business when defining their target market must consider the target markets geographical location, their demographics ( age, gender, family size, income, education ) their socioeconomic life style and the behavior of the customer ( whether they are loyal to this particular company/business, which many apple customers are )Apple generally target artistic, smart, out going minded people. Their mission statement supports this:
”Apple is committed to bringing the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through its innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings”
The marketing mix which is the process of matching the business capabilities with the customer needs is something that is needed. This involves Apple looking at their Product and what research and more development they can do on it, how they set the price of the product, what promotion is needed for this particular product and place ( distribution )
Apple uses 75% of their profits for R and D which is obviously helping them produce innovative products to capture the markets imagination. The price apple set is usually quite high, but very reasonable considering no other business is evolving at the same speed as Apple. Of course considering apple has to take into account product development costs, product costs, promotional costs and distribution costs when deciding on price for one of their products. Apple’s approach to marketing is of high standards, the apple logo is the most well known logo in the world, second is nike. And lastly placement, Apple’s products are sold around the world in computer stores, Clothes stores and they have their own stores which are of the highest quality of computer stores around the world and are only found in major cities. They now distribute them in some sport stores now as well, keeping with their sporty image.
A SWOT analysis is used by business’s to evaluate themselves and their competitors. It determines their strengths, weakness’s, opportunities and threats. Strengths to the ipod shuffle are in many, but the main strength it has to offer and that apple tries to present is that the size of it means the athlete who is using it does not have to carry around a big heavy music player in his/her pocket. The weakness of the product is that the user of the ipod can not see what songs they want to hear because the music on the ipod is shuffled around. The threats to the ipod shuffle is now other ipods are getting smaller and light, so the main strength to the product is decreasing as the other products get smaller. As well as other business’s making new products similar to this. for example. mp3’s
In conclusion apple has a business very well run and to be still in its growth stage as a business after 35 or more years is amazing. May they keep growing as a company because in my personal opinion i think they are doing great!
3 years ago | Tags: Business studies
