MARKETING PLAN

APPLE MACBOOK AIR 2010

CASE STUDY WITHIN INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE

Author: Vinh Duong Xuan – 7009973

Lim Yaeji – 4960024
Jang Jun Ho – 4614940
Tutor: Prof. Cho Hyuk Soo
Daegu - December 2010
 INTRODUCTION

Apple Inc. is one of the world’s giants of the

Information Era. Headquartered in California, U.S;

the multinational corporation designs,

manufactures and sells electronics, personal

computers, portable music players, mobile phones,

softwares, etc. In the past few years, Apple has

created a wide range of big hits, some of them were

listed as one of the greatest inventions of the 21 st Century (such as iPod, iPhone,

iPad…). For many years, our customers have always addressed us as a first-rate

company with revolutionary innovations, superb quality products with

customer-oriented designs.

The 2010 Macbook Air is the latest product that we have introduced recently. It’s

one of the most incredible products we have ever built: the world thinnest, most

hi-tech notebooks. The product is being sold like a hot cake at the moment in the

U.S since the grand introduction on 20 October this year in the U.S. Now we are

planning on introducing it into Korean markets. After studying the market, we

came up with our Marketing Plan as below.

The Marketing Plan comprises of three main steps:

- Situation analysis: SWOT analysis

- Marketing strategic planning (STP strategy)

- Marketing strategy (4P strategy)

 SWOT ANALYSIS

1. Strengths:

- Apple is one of the most established and well-known brands in the

world.

- Strong customer loyalty.

- High product quality.

- Highly innovative technology (very thin and light, aluminum material,

solid hard drive…)

- High stability (Mac OS has less problems than Windows)

- Good financial position.

2. Weaknesses:

- High price.

- Mac softwares are not familiar to Korean customers.

- Apple service in Korea is less effective than Korean competitors.

- Low market share.

3. Opportunities:

- Big success of iPhone & iPod may help Apple attract new users who

haven’t own a Mac system.

- Increase of life standard in Korea (there are more wealthy people

nowadays than before)

- High market growth of the whole industry.

- Many Korean customers prefer small and light laptops.

4. Threats:

- There are already many competitors in Korean market.

 - Global financial crisis may reduce demand for high price products.

- Innovative products of other competitors.

MARKETING STRATEGIC PLANNING (STP)

Segmentation

Apple uses demographic segmentation strategy with income as the parameter:

people with high financial ability who demand a powerful notebook with

brilliant design, extremely thin and light body, and excellent performance: the

most outstanding net-book in the market.

Targeting

For this segment of the market, price is not the critical requirement to decide on

a product. Businessmen, who travel a lot, require a stable product, more

performance with less weight. MacBook Air 2010 satisfies all their needs better

than all of our competitors can do.

To target this segment, Apple tried to use its experience to make their notebooks

even thinner, remove unnecessary parts and minimize the size of the hardwares

in order to make a smaller, lighter but faster notebook. Not just that, we bring in

the multitouch track pad and a full keyboard, plus a powerful video card for HD

movies, a solid hard drive and a high quality screen.

Positioning

We understand that customer perception is the key factor affecting our product’s

success. For a very long time we have already built in the mind of customers
around the world a perception of a well-established brand with highly innovative

products. When talking about Apple products, we all think of fancy, fashionable,

high stability, excellent performance…and together with that, of course higher

price. We have done quite many promotional activities through many channels

such as television, Internet, Apple store exhibition, University campus

campaign…Our exceptional growth shows that we are going the right way.

MARKETING MIX STRATEGY (4P)

Product

When thinking about the first P in the

marketing mix strategy (Place), we need to

raise a question: How should our company

design, manufacture the product so that it

enhances the customer experience?

We put a huge effort in studying our

customers’ behavior and try our best to listen

to them. We understand that our target customers nowadays do not only need a

basic notebook, they want something that satisfy not just the basic needs, but

also have to bring them a new experience.

For the first time we remove the traditional hard-drive, replace it with a solid

state drive in a special design to give for space for battery. Also Apple ordered
Intel to build a special CPU for their Macbook Air (which is still powerful, but

smaller and consumes less battery). Moreover, the DVD-drive does not exist on

this notebook (nowadays DVD-drive is not as necessary as before). We provide

the traditional Mac Application DVD under a USB stick…

We continuously innovates our products to meet the increasing standards of our

customers.

Price

As how we did for years now, Apple

products occur to customers’ mind as

world-class products, together with

higher price than our major competitors.

Why do people pay more money for our

products instead of other substitutes?

Because we don’t only offer them just a

normal product. It’s the premium that

makes the difference. The customers do not receive only the products. They are

proud of having an Apple product, it give them confidence with a lot of

characteristics that they never receive from purchasing another product. We

cannot and will never change our pricing policy.

Place

It is important that the product is

available to the customer at the right

place, at the right time and in the right

quantity. We have been establishing our Apple Store chain through out Korea.

We have our products available in almost every city in Korea. Apart from that,

one of our main target segments is student. We have had 18 campus stores in

some major universities of Korea, giving students the best products with

discounted price.

Promotion

For the Macbook Air we came up with many

catchy slogans:

- "There's something in the air"

- "Thin as always. Faster than ever."

-"Redesigned. Reengineered, Re-everythinged."

Besides our promotional activities on the web,

we have been running advertisements on major

Korean TV channels (such as MNC, KBS, SBS…)

as well as local newspapers. Moreover we will launch an Apple Campus

campaign in all the universities that we have the campus store located in.

Students participating in this campaign can receive discounts as usual plus some

free gifts such as a printer, a mouse or an iPod…

We believe that with this Marketing Strategy, the Macbook Air 2010 will be

another big success as iPhone are today in Korea.