Apple- not following 4Ps of Kotler?
Out of many
thought provoking lines, I just started thinking about a tweet from one of my
respected senior.
“Apple, a Failure of traditional 4P’s of
Marketing and yet a success!
I analyzed
the same, I began to run through 4P’s and yes, bang on, it seemed true! And I
was convinced of greatness of apple brand who had challenged the traditional
theory.
But there
were some counter views when I discussed the same with one of another respected
senior who was of the opinion that it was not true.
Two different people, same tweet, two
opinions, I was confused! I wanted to get to depth!
View
Product- Apple has not done any innovation
in products, portable music player was not launched by them, Apple may seem to
be innovative company and brand but they have beautifully done innovations in
product design and user experience, all perfect! If you compare features of
apple phone with competitors, features are same or even less, so nothing great
features wise! An Ok product!
Promotions: an apple has never promoted its products,
only word of mouth has been the sole reason for its success (because of good
product design and user experience), one may argue what is the need of
promotion if your product is selling well on word of mouth ( highest form of marketing) but apple
has never focused on promotions.
Pricing- Apple products are way to highly
priced (one may argue its their pricing strategy) but why? what does the
product/brand hold to deserve such high pricing? Great product, no? Great value, no? Great features, no? Why then he is
charging so high pricing?
Place- Apple has been purposefully denying
its availability of products in India, a country who can give its sales a great
spurt, a country with affordability? Why such demarcation?
Overall, a
sidelined view of 4P’s, but apple brand /product is a success story in itself!
It’s a league, it’s a community, and it’s the pride of owning apple products
which is driving its sales.
Counter View
Product- it’s a brilliant product with such
a great user experience, experience is driving people crazy and people are
buying it, wanting it, waiting for it! What else a product can offer, experience only which is there in apple,
one up for apple product!
Promotions: It’s a company strategy not to
promote its products so extensively when their product is selling like hot
cakes. Why promote? Word of mouth is enough.Who said a brand needs to promote?,
it’s a calculated decision and in some ways of the other , it is creating
required word of mouth promotions required to sell the brand., two up for
apple.
Pricing: it’s the experience for which
people are paying it, high or low doesn’t matter and they are ready to pay much
more.
Place- it might be possible that there is
enough demand outside and they are not able to match the production levels,
they may be wanting to ramp up production levels to cater to that demand and
then possibly make easily availability in india.
What a Magic , apple has created, I
have not figured out yet, what made me spend on iphone , I don’t know, was it
experience? Was it the features? Was it word of mouth created by others?
Yet lot to learn from apple, a
masterpiece!
Vikas
sachdeva
