Apple and 4P's of Marketing

 

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