How Apple gains the customer emotion?

Gain the heat of customer is the key of marketing, if a company wants to maximize their profit, they must learn to predict and satisfy customer’s need.

The value of a brand does not really come from the brand itself, it comes from the customer. When a product is close to customer’s internal need, and show the concern to customer’s emotions, it can touch and influence customer’s heat, in order to gain customer’s admission and loyalty.

How Apple achieves this goal, and gains the brand value from customer?

First, from external to internal, as Apple’s digital product, everything from its appearance and feeling, it is the really good model of an experience product. Its design, shape, color and material can bring customer very different user experience and emotions, and help customers understand their innovation idea. In the customer experience, Apple did extremely well with their own retail store. It provides a space for involve in product, in order to gain more user experience, besides it is a place to express brand image and value too.

Secondly, from product display to product worship. Furthermore, besides the user experience in retail store, Apple utilizes social media very well. Its confidence policy, make the Apple’s fans dying to buy the new launch product. Apple increases its worship to customer, make the customers proud of using the iProducts, believe themselves are ‘applers’, they are different. All of those elements involve in customer emotion, and contribute to customer loyalty.

Apple focuses not only on technology, but also on emotions.

You may ask your friends who have an iPod or an iPhone, what the function differences between iPod and the other mp3 player are? And why iPhone is so special to separate from other cell phones? I guest most of them don’t really know the functional differences, and could not figure it out too. But there is one point we can be sure, that is all of them are willing to pay a higher price to buy an iPod or an iPhone. What’s happening?

We can think about this question from customer’s behavior point of view, today’s apple fans are typical emotion customer. This type of people theirs customer regard the product value more than the product price. As the emotion customer population is expanding, we can say we are entering the emotion customer century.

From the marketing point of view, it is one of today’s lifestyle, people are pursuit a feeling to make themselves feel great. They are not buying a product, but a feeling; they are not buying a smart phone, but the emotion and experience of Apple.

An important causing of above situation is that the emotion economy is going to replace the rational economy. Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple had kept on judging the customer electric industry working way - only focus on technology. From the iMac in 1998, to the iPod in 2001, then to the iPad and iPhone, Steve Jobs used his action to tell the industry, the time to win just depend on technology and hardware had gone. Instead, we should innovate a product to resonate with customer’s emotions, and provide the impressive experience. If a product can arouse customer’s emotion, then it inspires the demand. As a result, Apple is expressly successful nowadays, and its iProduct has strong influence on customer’s behavior, redefine their life, work and entertainment, and even their values.

Co-Branding

For Christmas Apple proposes partnerships with such known brands as Louis Vuitton, Swarovski, Michael Kors,  Marchal Bergman etc.

Prestigious Brands are selling accessories for Apple Macs, iPads and iPhones and thus creating marketing synergy.

These interesting co-brandings will help Apple and its partners with generation of royalty income, more sales income, greater customer trust on the product, wide scope due to joint advertising and better product image by association with another renowned brand.

Does this co-branding contain any risks? For example if a customer associates any adverse experience with a constituent brand, may it damage the total brand equity? Or Apple is too strong and can face any risk? 

http://store.apple.com/fr/browse/holiday

Nokia vs iPhone

Nokia will launch new smartphones to close the distance with the other competitors. Although Nokia is still the global leader in smartphones, the competition is very tight in the expensive segment with its main opponent - Apple's iPhone.

Will Nokia be able to struggle with Apple, the brand that everyone is dreaming to have ? will it be possible to compete with the iPhone’s prestige and style ? What do you think ? 

A new Steve Jobs is born??

Mac vs. Pc Ads, what do you think?

In 2009, a serie of ads were created illustrating the competition (war?) between Apple and Microsoft.
What were the impacts of these commercials? Which company do you think it favored?

To watch the rest of the videos, please click on the link below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mennLoXJkHo

Porter’s 5 forces

DEGREE OF RIVALRY  3/5 :

As we have seen previously, Apple has different types of competitors - Amazon, Google, Real Networks, Sony and Hewlett Packard, with their strong investment in content; and Nokia, HTC, LG, Samsung for the hardware. Apple is the leader as to the technologies and customers’ affection for the style. But digital technologies are developing really fast, Apple’s competitors invest a lot in research and development, which means that the degree of rivalry is high.   

THREAT OF NEW ENTRANTS 3/5:

Technological and financial barriers are very high. Huge investments to be done in R&D by new entrants. It is already a concentrated market, so the room for new brands is not really existing. But, it is certain that new entrants will be numerous shortly. In fact, new projects are being developed by Samsung and HP. Those competitors are strong,  and we may see that price factor is almost absent for the ultimate choice for such types of technologies. Customers pay the brand and the tendency. That is why for instance Apple is top of mind, but other strong brands are on their way, creating similar innovative products.

THREATS OF SUBSTITUTES 2/5:

Lots of associations lobbying that point at superfluous Apple’s Ipad aspect. Their argument is : if we take away the sensory touch screen part - standard netbook will be enough to face it.  Nevertheless, the fact is that Ipad is still the leader on the market and Apple keeps going on innovating its products, which means that competitors should invest a lot in research and development and in their brand’s promotion. While the Apple brand has already gained the confidents of its loyal customers. 

SUPPLIER POWER 3/5 :

If we talk about the suppliers in the content (and not about the suppliers of the raw materials), we may say that products such as Ipad or Iphone depend a lot on the content proposed on the platform. We should observe the developers’ positioning and effects on Ipad in order to judge the strength of the force. We shouldn’t forget that Applestrore is the leader on this market, that is profitable for Apple.

If we talk about suppliers of materials for hardware, the power is quite high because of the price of raw materials and digital elements. But as Apple is a powerful company, suppliers are in competition to deliver and to sign contracts with Apple.

BUYER POWER 3/5:

Today’s demand on such trendy products is constantly growing. On one hand Apple brand has to adapt its design and to be more and more innovative in order to please the targeted consumers. On the other hand, as there is no “real” competition for Apple brand, with such a stylish design and innovative combination of software and hardware, consumers will not prefer to switch if the price fits their estimations. Customers are attracted to the brand, thanks to the buzz generated by the brand. In general, the brand is in a strong position, due to its good client relations and controls viral marketing very well. Thus all in all buyers’ strength is limited. 

Apple Headquarters in Cupertino, CA

Siri: A technological revolution or an Apple magic powder?

The iPhone 4S is faster, slicker and has a better camera than its predecessor, the iPhone 4. But Siri is the iPhone 4S’main news: a voice-recognition feature.
Siri can do so many things: from giving the weather to calling your best friend.
At the beginning, when Tim Cook announced the iPhone 4S capabilities few weeks ago, I was skeptical. Actually, the vocal-recognition was created five (or more) years ago and it was not a success. We had to pronounce words exactly like a robot for being understood, and from then there are no more improvements.
What a surprise with Siri! Even if in French the application was not perfect for now, it is a huge novelty in technological matters.
According to Peter Nowak, “The tool works well with features embedded in the iPhone, such as weather forecasts, calling up contacts, scheduling notifications and launching media. Indeed, after a few hours of playing with it, I may just be ready to say it’s more accurate than anything I’ve seen on Android.”

Siri is the actual spot in the digital world, a lot of website are talking about it and some very funny about what can we ask to Siri: Shit That Siri Says, http://shitthatsirisays.tumblr.com/
It’s true that we can ask a lot of thing to Siri; to cancel or to plan meeting on our agenda, to ask the Joseph Kessel’s best books (Siri launches an Internet research). We can also

But for using Siri, we have to be connected to Internet… An important constraint for users and a proof for the limited thinking of Siri: it is more of a programmed robot than a thinking entity. It means a lot of workers are behind this and have to anticipate questions and answers!

For Peter Nowak, Siri comes from The military: “As the video here explains, Apple’s tool started as a DARPA project called Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes (CALO).”

What do you think about it?

Has Apple any competitors ? Is there any company even close ?

We may say that Apple has positioned itself very specifically, and it seems like it is impossible for other brands to compete with.

Apple produces computers, telephones, tablets, music players, operating systems, television set-top boxes, lifestyle and productivity software, professional media software, wireless routers, and  finally Apple has an “app store” where you can buy movies, music and applications.

Today Apple is one of the leaders in the PC and smartphone markets. Due to the wide range of proposed products and services (providing content and applications for users)  it is really difficult for a company to compete with Apple. The competition is not coming from the “traditional” PC players, but from Amazon, Google, Real Networks, Sony and Hewlett Packard, because of their strong investment in content.

Amazon is the content competitor: it proposes digital music, films, TV shows, and books, but only for PCs.  

Google with Android OS and applications for smartphones, can become a real threat for Apple leadership.  

Microsoft with Windows OS is the main operating system competitor for Apple, but if not the price advantage, customers would be likely to chose Mac operations systems with an easy, commerce-based solution to content access.

Sony directly challenges Apple. Sony proposes movies, music, e-books, consoles, mobile games as well as advanced smartphones and PCs. 

Concerning iPhone hardware competitors, Nokia, HTC, LG and Samsung are strong but they  depend on someone else for the software. So all in all competition is weak taking in consideration the iPhone as a whole: hardware plus software.

Usually the competition in the technology market is very intense. Apple works very hard on R&D and marketing to keep the popularity of iPod, iPad, iPhone and Apple Mac. Apple’s success lets us even think that the company has No Real competitors. That no company has the same positioning, advantages and range of product as Apple.

Do you think Apple has no competitors? If yes, how long will it last?

Purchase Motivation

Great Appearance

The iProducts are always very good looking. For example iPod shuffle and iPod nano offer seven bright colors with sliver, black, blue, green, yellow, pink and red. It’s very simple but fashion. The Mac air is the thinnest laptop in today’s notebook market. With width of only 11.8’’ and height of 0.68’’, it’s just 1.08 kg light. Its sleek surface is faireshaped and durable. The iMac’s all-in-one beautifully package with wireless keyboard and mouse make your desk more orderly and clutter-free. The modern appearance of iProduct is really attractive for people who care about style.

Operation Experience

            Recently, Apple has launched the new operating system OX S Lion for Macs and iOS 5 for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Those new systems are much more intuitive, fast, powerful than Windows from Microsoft and Android from Google. Besides, there are thousands of software provided in the Mac App store, sorted by featured, top charts, categories with paid and free. Furthermore, it’s very user friendly, and quite different from the other background system, it’s just a click to both install and update application during all the process. In addition, Apple also offers the iCloud for iproduct user for helping integrate the information between your apple devices more conveniently.

Security System

            Operating system such as Microsoft, Apple’s latest operating system OS X Lion phone is more security than Windows’ system. It has less bug and leaks, and harder to get in the background system.

It’s cool!

Another one of the main motivations of buying an iProduct is: it’s cool! Apple has built itself an advanced image successfully and it did a great marketing job to make the iProduct with the cool label. They had put it into people's consciousness that Apple is cool, advanced, high tech, having an iProduct make you looks cool. People are willing to pay more for this cool label even it’s much more expensive than other digital products.

What’s your purchase motivation of buying an iProduct? Its appearance? Its function? Its security? Or just because it looks cool?