Marketing: Environment Audit - Article Example

Environmental audit Bijiek Jieknyal Walden Environmental Audit Introduction I have chosen Apple to carry out an environmental audit on given the high spirit the company is rated with. A company is well known for changing the way people lead their lives especially in the communication field. It varied product drove me to find out how the company manages to be prolific and productive and yet still be able to produce quality products. Market Apple is one of the biggest companies in the world with a brand that is worth billions of dollars.

Under the distinguished and charismatic leadership of the company’s chief executive officer, the late Steve Jobs, the company has been gaining dominance in the technology industry over the last decade in the most prodigious manner that has left critics dumbfounded. Apple market share has grown from strength to strength making it the leading supplier of smart phones and tablet computers in the world. Apple has all the opportunity to double its market share given that it only has 5% share in mobile phones and 5% in PCs.

So far, apple has not fully penetrated the Chinese market and if it does, its market share will even triple. Given that apple is well positioned to take on the next decade challenges and opportunities that shall emerge in the mobile internet and cloud computing, it is likely that it will continue to dominate the market. In the UK alone, apple has a huge market share. Recent research has show that apple will sale around 44.2 million iPads in 2011, 500,000 thousand more than what was anticipated (Standoff, 2007).

This will be 74% market share of the tablet industry, 10% more than the previous projection. This is anticipated to continue well up to 2013. The profits of the company have been surging on with the company making $5.99 billion in its March quarterly profits with revenue of $24.67 billion. Customers Apple has three-customer segmentation. The first segmentation consists of the early adopters who always want to be the first to have new products from the company. They always want to stand out. The second segment consists of late majority customers.

These customers only want products they will easily understand how to use them and that those products will meet their needs. These customers mostly buy the iPod and iLife. The third segmentation consists of customers who use the products for professional reasons (Yarrow, 2011). They could be authors who want to write books, musicians who want to compose their songs or filmmakers who would appreciate taking films using the product. According to majority of customers who use apple products, they feel that the company is doing an excellent job in the way it market it products.

Customers feel that the company’s decision to have a store just for Apple products as a good customer care service. In addition, majority of customers appreciate the way Apple products complement each other and therefore making it unnecessary for them to buy complementing products from one company unlike Apple competitors who do not have complementing products. Furthermore, they say that Apple is consistent in its products in that a customer who has already owned an Apple product will find it easy to use Apple products that have different portfolio (Standoff, 2007).

The new innovations that come with Apple products together with their attractiveness is what lures customers back unlike Apple competitors, whose products are less attractive and have few innovations. Other customers feel that it take long for the customer care service at Apple to respond to their needs and sometimes the company refuse to take back products that are returned by customers. Although most customers agree that Apple products are quite expensive as compared to it competitors. However, given the quality of those products, the prices are acceptable to the customers.

Competitors The major Apple competitors are: Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, HTC, LG, Dell, Sony, Google, Real Network, Acer and Hewlett. Most of these companies have huge market base. Microsoft is bigger than Apple from branding to market base (Standoff, 2007). The company’s main objective is to increase their market base and encroach into market base as the tightly safeguard their own markets. The main weaknesses that Apple competitors have are that they focus so much on technology at the expense of the customer.

They also do not have variety of products that can complement each other and hence their customers have to purchase complementing products from other companies (Meyers, 2011). The greatest strength that these companies have is that they are high specialized and therefore well versed in the line of products they engage in. Distribution and dealers Since 2001, Apple has been selling its products through its own retail stores. This decision was arrived at due to its marketing strategies that were not yielding any fruits.

By so doing, Apple became hands on marketer for its on products (Standoff, 2011). This triggered a lot of negative reaction from dealers who felt that they would lose market to Apple itself (Meyers, 2011). The major dealers are: Best buys, Guitar centre, Good guys Wal-mart and Bloomingdales. The Apple stores are very efficient since they know what the customer want and how to get it to them. Suppliers The key resources used by Apple for it products has been growing over time. This has seen Apple increase the volume of its output and therefore, as the trend goes, the company’s suppliers still have enough stock for production of Apples products.

Trends among the suppliers of Apple around the world hint that there will be a considerable increase in the sales of Apple products as they are likely to increase their supply (Meyers, 2011) In Taiwan, suppliers projected that sales could increase even up to 87% in the month of May. Facilitators and marketing firms The Apple warehouse in New York is the biggest warehouse for Apple. The location is perfect and the services provided are of high quality and exceedingly dependable (Standoff, 2011).

‘Think different’ was one of the famous advertising slogan adopted by Apple between 1995 and 2000 to market Apple computers. It was developed by TBWA\Chiat\Day, then Apple’s advertising agency from New York. The slogan was excessively effective since it was used both on television commercials after other product commercials and print media like Newsweek magazine and Time magazine (Standoff, 2011). Think different was followed by switch ad campaign in 2002. The advertisement was mainly effective in enabling people switch from using Microsoft windows to Mac.

Silhouette commercials on print and television; have also been effective in marketing iPods and iTunes. Despite massive success, there has been a lot of criticism about these advertisements especially the iPhone ads which exaggerated that they have fast network speed when they are not on 3G network infrastructure. Apple does not have marketing research firms since it does not do marketing research as Steve Jobs once explained. On the financial ground, Apple is known to be an excellent company that promotes children by providing educational and youth services for their empowerment.

(Standoff, 2011). Conclusion Apple is doing well in the not only in terms of monetary gains. With good customer base and a steady growth for the project, and with a cash reserve that is more than the USA cash reserve, Apple can move forward by innovating its products so that are attractive and enjoyable to use, yet so cheap. They become admirable sooner rather than later. References Meyers, R. (2011). Apple has no competition. Retrieved from: http://technorati.com/technology/article/apple-has-no-competition/#ixzz1d93YcDQ5.

Standoff, L.( 2007). Apple's marketing genius: How does a company that says so little create so much hype? http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2084522,00.asp#fbid=ABTznQYLbmq Yarrow, J. (2011). Apple steals market share from android in the U.S. Retrieved from: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-06-21/tech/30020863_1_android-iphone- verizon-network#ixzz1d9ueCMsk