MARKETING ESSENTIALS

Marketing Essentials-Marketing Plan

Introduction4

Mission Statement4

External analysis5

Porter's Five Forces5

PEST Analysis6

Political Factors6

Economic Factors6

Social Factors7

Technological Factors7

Internal analysis7

Strengths:7

Opportunities:7

Weaknesses:8

Threats:8

Competitor Analysis8

Advertising Expense8

Net income9

Current ratio10

Return on Investment (ROI)10

Net profit Margin11

Share Price12

Samsung13

Marketing Objectives14

Target Market14

Positioning14

Marketing Mix Strategy15

New Products15

Price15

Place15

Promotion15

Marketing Research15

Future Strategy16

Financial summary18

Current Financial performance19

Financial Forecasting20

Conclusion and Recommendation22

Introduction

Established in 1977 and formerly known as Apple Computer, Inc, Apple is an American Multinational Corporation formed by the entrepreneurial genius Steve Jobs (Price, 2001; Woznaik and Smith, 2006, pp. 126). It is a company that designs consumer electronics and computer hardware/software. It is one of the leading companies of the USA and the globe. Company is famous for its music devices, laptops and their flagship cellular device, the iPhone. Some of the most famous devices from Apple include the Macintosh computer line, the iPod Music player line, the iTunes computer music manager and the iPhone series. Their internet browser, Safari is not as accepted as the competitors but it still has a large share of the market. Apple's Mac Operating System is famous worldwide as being the best operating system for managing heavy processes, graphical and multimedia related tasks. Unlike Microsoft's Windows Operating Systems, it is not vulnerable to viruses and bug attacks. Besides the mentioned products, Apple has a line of other products that are considered as unique and highly productive by users all over the world (Linzmayer, 1999, pp. 232). The pie chart below shows the percentage of sales of Apple's products from all over the world.

Mission Statement

“Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software” (Apple.com)

External analysis

Apple Inc is a global company which deals with various consumer products such as personal computers, computer software, and consumer electronics. It also includes the hardware products production such as Macintosh, iPhone, iPad and others.

Porter's Five Forces

We can make an analysis of the external environment of Apple INC with the help of Porter's five forces model. In this model, we can see that competition in terms of suppliers is very high; therefore, the bargaining power of suppliers affect the environment of Apple INC. As the competition is very high, and there are many other retail stores; therefore, customers bargaining power is very high as customers have the option to go for others. New retail stores are entering in the market bringing threats for the company. Because of new entries in the market, Apple is afraid of the arrival of substitute products in the market. There is a very high chance of arrival of substitute products in the market. Competition is increasing in the market day by day, and the competitive rivalry is increasing for Apple. From Supplier they face the high cost of switching. New Entrant can enter into the market by huge production and can affect the apple by offering the attractive prices to the consumers (Porter, 2008, pp. 375).

PEST Analysis

Political Factors

The main political factors associated with the Apple are the support of local authority charity which is declining immensely. There is a great potential of withdrawal preceding the changes in the political ...