APPLE INC.

Business Strategy



Table of Contents

Introduction1

Business strategy1

Apple Incorporation2

Apple's Culture3

Best Practices of Apple Strategy in People, System and Process Perspective5

Innovations5

Products for Dumbs5

Continuous Improvements6

Going Green6

Retail Store6

Focus on Quality7

Email Marketing7

People Management8

Television Advertisements8

Post Steve Jobs8

Conclusion9

Reference10

Business Strategy

Introduction

Strategy is a term that owes its origin from military. Its importance was realized few decades back. Strategy allows the firm to position itself in the best manner as possible to align itself with environment to capitalize on strengths, take benefits of opportunities and dodge the threats. The dynamic nature of environment is making strategy formulation a necessity rather than optional element. Some firms like Apple Inc. are on top of corporate food chain. For companies like these it's about setting the benchmark for others in most of the cases. Companies seek the strategies and their results of giants like these to follow. However, companies like Apple have to rely on intuition, vision, inventions and experiments, apart from seeking best prices form other industries and adopting them. This paper evaluates the existing business strategy and best practices from a people, systems and process perspectives in Apple Inc.

Business strategy

Strategic Management is a term widely used in modern businesses (Daft, 2011: 375). However, few companies truly understand the meaning and process of developing it to ultimate success. Strategy allows the light to penetrate the darkest corners of future by preparing the company to anticipate, act proactively and react to remaining unforeseen events. Strategic management is actually the formulation, implementation and evaluation of cross functional decisions aiming at enabling the firm to achieve its objectives. Strategy involves the analysis of internal and external environments in the form of organised audits (David, 2006: 82). Internal audit reveals the strengths and weaknesses that summarize the resource condition of the firm, what it has and what can be acquired if needed. Some of the resources that have been recently recognized for their true worth is customer loyally, satisfaction, and also the loyal employees. The customers are becoming less loyal to brands, those having the customer loyalty often become the one to envy with (McLoughlin & Aaker 2010). The external environment audit pertains to the opportunities and threats in the environment that is not in the control of any single firm, therefore, company can only position itself in the best manner to take the best out of it.

Some firms are much better than other and this ability can take a backyard start-up into highest peaks of corporate community. Apple Inc. is one such success story. Although Apple had to face some initial blows while bringing the Macintosh in market, however, it eventually got on the success rail that continues till today. The companies like these set best practices for others in the industry and across industry. Best practices are simply the operating procedures and philosophies that are seen as successful and followed by others to bring similar results in their respective domains. Apple incorporation is seen often by others to follow form marketing to finance and people to process ...