Apple, Inc. Product Life Cycle and Marketing Strategy
Abstract
The notion of product life cycle is widely used in marketing nowadays in order to adjust marketing activities to create a coherent and relevant tactics for each stage of product’s life. However, for some hi-tech products the conventional pattern of product life cycle does not work because of the paradigm swift. The current research investigates the life cycle of Apple, Inc. products and reveals that it can be characterized as a Shark Fin life cycle. Marketing strategy in this case is aimed at maximizing the company’s profit during the “big bang” stage and supporting the sales during the maturity stage. The specifics and several options of marketing activities for most active life cycles of Apple’s product are also discussed.
Apple, Inc. operates in cutting-edge technology market where the product which is unique today becomes outdated tomorrow. The current research applies the “Shark Fin” product life cycle pattern to Apple products. It reveals that due to the swift in life cycle stages towards high sales in the NPI stage and fast decline afterwards, the marketing strategy needs to be adapted to balance the sales over the span of product’s life.
In marketing such product life cycle pattern as adopted by Apple’s products is called the “Shark Fin” phenomena ("Big Bang Disruption", 2013) (see App.1). Apple’s Iphone or Ipad were widely promoted during the product development stage before the launch (“singularity”), and the sales were at their peak right after the release (“big bang”). Then, as customers satisfied their demand in a short period of time after the release the sales began to fall (“the big crunch”). In order to revive the interest to the product and go to a maturity stage instead of going to “entropy” stage, Apple had to release new models with added features once in a while (Wells, 2015). Thus, it is necessary to take into account the specifics of this pattern when developing a marketing strategy for Apple products.
In order to develop a successful marketing strategy, the company has to create an integrated marketing communication plan where all marketing activities will aim at delivering the same message to the customers (Naeem, Bilal & Naz, 2013). It means that all Apple’s activities should persuade its customers that the company’s products are cutting-edge technology which provides unique features to the customers and is ready to satisfy their needs. The company should also provide adequate sales and after-sales service and customer support. However, no international marketing differentiation is required since the product is not adapted separately for different markets, does not target particular customer groups and the USA has an image of a producer of high quality high-tech devices (Vrontis & Thrassou, 2007).
It is necessary to begin marketing activities during the product development (“singularity”) stage (Wells, 2015). Here the marketing strategy can be characterized as push strategy since the company does not specify its target audience and educates a very wide range of …
