Free «Marketing Strategies» Essay Paper

Market segmentation involves having subsets of consumers within a wide target market. The consumer subsets usually have common needs as well as priorities. The strategy of market segmentation identifies consumers, and provides the necessary data support to aid in attaining set goals of a marketing plan. However, there are certain specifications for a group of consumers to be part of an organization’s target group. Primarily, the group ought to have similar preference, as well as reasonable number to enable an organization to maximize its profits. The group of consumers ought to have a long life span where the organization can reach these consumers through distribution and promotional channel. The organization can divide its consumers in terms of demographics, behavior, psychographic and culture (Blythe & Megicks, 2010).

Apple Inc. Marketing Segments

Apple Inc. usually conducts numerous researches in order to determine and identify the particular target market segments. Marketing strategies are critically important in the promotion of varied commodities, therefore, the company usually analyses the different markets where they further divide into market segments of various categories. Graphic segmentation variables include city size, density, region, as well as density. The demographic segmentation variables comprise of age, gender, age, family, lifecycle, education, occupation, income and nationality. Psychographic segmentation variable are socio-economic status, individual values, attitudes as well as lifestyle grouping. Finally, behavioral segmentation variable include occasions, benefits sought, user status, usage rate, loyalty status, and individual’s attitude towards a product (Jefferson & Anthony, 2014).

The Apple Inc. Company uses market segmentation to ensure that it retains profit share of it products respective markets. Apple Inc. usually target specific experiences of users and build a product in accordance to that experience. The Apple Company products comprise of the iPad, iPhone and Mac for specific consumer segments. The Apple products are highly profitable, for instance, the Apple Mac is highly profitable despite owning only a small percent of the personal computer market. Product planners of the Apple Company aggressively target the most important market segments the ones that are continuously growing with high profitability. The Apple Mac personal computers compete with the high-end Windows personal computers in both the consumer as well as the business segments. In addition, the Apple Company consumer segmentation of the iPad and iPhone consumer segment was through psychographic segmentation where it applied the consideration of the consumers’ lifestyle, personality as well as socio-economic status. Apple uses the socio-economic status to determine the prices of its products, for instance, the iPad 2 pricing basis for target market includes income, occupation and the level of income. The Apple iPads and iPhones come in various models that are suitable for the various requirements of the consumer’s target population (Steenkamp, 2014).   

How Internal and External Organization Environment Affect Marketing

In an organization, marketing affects greatly the internal as well as the external environment of a business. An organization’s internal factors comprise of the business image, reputation, décor, credit worthiness, and management structure as well as business decisions. The external factors include prevailing lending conditions, competition, and government regulation. In the marketing strategy, planners have to anticipate as well as manage the various circumstances affecting their business.

The organization’s internal factor will influence various aspects of marketing. For instance, marketing requires funding. Therefore, the marketing department uses modes of marketing that are cost effective since they can only use funds availed to them by the organization. A company’s reputation is the greatest marketing aspect in the business world, and maintaining the reputation enables marketing campaign to be successful. The organization’s external factor also affects marketing, therefore, it has to plan and put in place marketing strategy that will assist them to counter various externalities such as stay ahead of the competition, coping with government regulations that are usually an unexpected blow to an organization plan. It is important for the marketing department to put in place strategies to manage the changes effectively and attain the set marketing objectives (McDonald & Wilson, 2011).

Solutions to Challenges in Strategic Marketing

Marketing strategy that is beneficial to an organization enables it to attain higher revenues, inform it consumers as well as stay ahead of its competitors. However, the market has become global, making marketing highly complex and dynamic. In creating a market strategy, the organization has to research extensively its target population to understand the various challenges that it will face in reaching the consumers and put in place the various precautions. Critical evaluation of the various aspects such as size and potential growth, careful research evaluation can aid the identification of the market needs will enable an organization to be highly competitive in the market. The market strategy ought to put in place a loyalty scheme that encourages consumer loyalty, which ensures an organization retains the market share. The organization can diversify its products to ensure that it take care of consumer individuality so that it is able to maximize on it profits (Nkamnebe, 2011).