Apple is one of the well-known American corporations engaged in developing and manufacturing personal computers, innovative tables, mobile devices, and software programs. It is one of the leading pioneers in technology that create the possibility of using operating systems and succeeding in multitasking. Stephen Wozniak and Steve Jobs founded Apple on April 1, 1976 (Apple, 2021). In 1977, the world saw the Apple II, the first mass-produced computer, defined as an absolute technological masterpiece (Apple, 2021). Although this project was in demand for about two decades, its follower, the Apple III, became a failure. It was unreliable because of overheating, and the quality of its processing was questionable because much work was done in a hurry to meet demand. Therefore, the Apple II was the only permanent source of income for the company for a long period.
Following the success of the offered projects and learning from mistakes, Apple was interested in developing new products, namely Lisa and Macintosh. They were characterized by a powerful graphical interface borrowed from Xerox (Apple, 2021). In 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh, a line of personal computers, also known as Mac. The commercial, directed by Ridley Scott, who had already succeeded as a director with his Alien and Blade Runner, strengthened the interest of consumers in this product. Apple was ready to cooperate with customers and offer them various interesting services. The organization focused on such characteristics as speed, reliability, and technology. All these are the factors of organizational success to be analyzed to understand Apple’s growth and stability in the technology sector.
re:Store
It is important to emphasize that Apple has partners who act as resellers. Business collaborations bring many benefits to all participants in a variety of ways. For example, re:Store is one of Apple’s partners that has Apple Premium Reseller (APR) status to offer its services in Russia and several European countries. APR organizations are located at premium points of sale and have a complete range of products and services and the highest quality (Zysman and Tyson, 2019). This program supports resellers specializing in the video, design, print, photography, music, and education markets. Thus, it is worth clarifying that, in fact, this organization is an official partner of Apple in some territories. This means that these organizations can practically equate to each other in the context of economic analysis.
Critical Success Factors for re:Store
Assessing current achievements allows marketing experts to understand if the offered products like phones and computers bring enough business benefits. re:Store turns its weaknesses into strengths and demonstrates good results. For example, a large financial capacity makes it possible for leaders to investigate multiple business sectors and be one step ahead of most competitors. In other words, the company uses its finances to gain the required competitive advantage. Enough time and resources for digital market demand monitoring introduce another company’s benefit to learn what customers may want. re:Store is also attentive to its reputation among customers and other organizations. Leaders understand that much success depends on how professional the team is, and only properly trained and acknowledged people work there. It is a responsibility of a company to present new products and make sure consumers gain an easy understanding of all services (Zysman & Tyson, 2019). Finally, re:Store benefits with absorbing organizations within the IT market to obtain enough resources and ideas.
Regarding the organization’s history, several successful deals brought millions of dollars for re:Store. For example, in 1996, NeXT brought about $430 million, P.A. Semi – $280 million in 2008, in 2010, Quattro Wireless – $274 million and Siri – $200, and Anobit Technologies – $500 million in 2012 (Zysman & Tyson, 2019). Positive changes in fiscal reports are observed between 2019 and 2020: $260.17 and $274.52, respectfully (Statista, 2021). Similar results are observed in product sales (an increase from $213.88 billion to $220.75 billion) and the service business like App Store and Apple Pay (an increase from $46.29 billion to $53.77 billion (Statista, 2021). Although these numbers do not represent the whole situation in the company, they prove the correctness of the chosen business program.
Threats in re:Store Analysis
Penetration of the smartphone market. Despite the fact that Apple phones are in demand, it is important to emphasize that the problem for the company is the introduction of other companies and their products on the market. For example, there are evident shifts in mobile operating systems and their market share: 47.5% for Android and 42% for iPhone (Howmuch, 2021). Samsung uses Android, HTC, Lenovo, and pretty much anyone else looking to enter the smartphone market. Naturally, Android is owned by Google, so Apple should be prepared to compete with smartphones (Zysman & Tyson, 2019).
Evident laptop competition. MacBook deals bring meaningful profits to the company, but it is wrong to neglect the power and unpredictable potentials of such organizations as Dell, Sony, or Lenovo. It is not that easy to guarantee a competitive advantage in modern notebook segments (Zysman & Tyson, 2019). MacBooks provide much love and consumer loyalty to the company because of their technological flawlessness.
Opportunities in re:Store Analysis
Growing market. The market for products provided by Apple is growing steadily. At the same time, the spheres of influence are spreading, for example, to poorer parts of the planet, where premium products are not in demand (Zysman & Tyson, 2019). Any company that grows and plans to hold its position should pay attention to castors with different sources of income. Because at the moment, this niche is promising for expanding the customer base.
Production of iWatch and Apple TV. Many factors determine the future of the digital business, and these two opportunities should help Apple prove its position in the market and areas for growth (Mas, 2018). Apple Watch already has 50% of the smart-watch market in the U.S.
Trend & Ratio Analysis
Recent revenue reports have already proved that Apple has high business potential and abilities to use available resources and turn them into profits. Trend and ration analysis shows that smartphones remain one of Apple’s major sources of income. At the same time, iPhone sales create additional concerns because of the unpredictable down from $142.38 to $137.78 in 2019 and 2020 (SAP, 2021). There are several reasons to explain this decline, but most people agree that the desire to obtain new models was challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic. Computer sales brought about $28.62 in 2020 and $25.74 in 2019 (Apple, 2021). Tablet sales are also promising in 2020 ($23.72 billion) compared to 2019 ($21.28) (Apple, 2021). Finally, good results are achieved on the market where home gadgets, accessories, and electronics are offered: $24.48 billion in 2019 and $30.62 billion in 2020.
Apple’s popularity per region is more or less predictable, depending on many financial and social factors. North and South America sales are the highest ($124.56 billion in 2020, while $116.91 billion in 2019) (Zysman & Tyson, 2019). European customers brought $60.29 billion in 2019 and $68.64 billion in 2020. China and Japan are the regions where sales decline was evident: from $43.78 billion in 2019 to $40.31 billion in 2020 and from $21.51 billion in 2019 to $21.42 billion in 2020, respectfully. Apple shares are not stable today, and financial and economic analytics continue observing and investigating the market.
Marketing Strategies of the Company
re:Store, the largest single-brand Apple Premium Reseller (APR) chain, strives to optimize ad placements continually and looks for new solutions to improve results through new automated tools. Therefore, re: Store used the Smart Shopping Campaign solution based on machine learning. To eliminate the problems and achieve the desired results, the specialists launched a “smart shopping campaign” (Zysman and Tyson, 2019). This tool combines simple product and display ads, including remarketing and lookalike audiences. The algorithms themselves select the relevant display places and set the bids to maximize the conversion value within the budget.
In the months leading up to testing the new tool, the team changed the attribution model in their Google Ads account from the last click to data-driven (DDA). This allowed the conversion value to be distributed throughout the entire conversion chain. The system itself identifies the keywords, ads, and campaigns that played the most important role in the conversion, and auto-assignment strategies take this information into account to achieve the target indicators (Zysman and Tyson, 2019). After that, the specialists removed all conversions in the account except for transactions since there was enough data on them for optimization. In this case, when automatically setting bids, the system took into account only those user actions that led to purchases. After a while, the brand has hooked up a “smart Shopping campaign” that maximizes the value of conversions within a budget. For the training period of the algorithms in the first two weeks, the team chose a ROAS 20% below the target (Zysman and Tyson, 2019, p. 64). As a result of this test, after reaching the desired indicators, the target ROAS value was increased (Zysman and Tyson, 2019). Throughout the test, the team gradually increased the daily budget each time the ad campaign reached its daily limit – until such notification stopped appearing.
re:Store always strives to use only the most effective tools to solve performance problems and is constantly looking for ways to optimize the performance of advertising campaigns to the maximum, increasing the return on investment. Management has always advocated the idea of ​​automating advertising activities and bidding strategies, especially when the logic of work can use machine learning using predictive signals about user intent (Zysman and Tyson, 2019). Therefore, the company welcomed the opportunity to participate in the test of the new functionality of Google Ads. The elapsed period since the launch has shown the advantage of the results of the work of the “smart shopping campaign” over the usual ones.
However, it is important to note that re:Store is a successor to Apple’s strategies. While most businesses try to compete with other representatives in their fields and prefer aggressive but fair advertising, Apple demonstrates another approach to gain leading positions at one specific market – mobile phones. All at once, Apple is characterized by a weak or no marketing budget because it does not find it necessary to advertise its services and products. The corporation has a variety of opportunities to cooperate with other companies and promote its ideas. In addition, stakeholders (network operators) want to pat for such ads to make sure Apple products can be used in their stores (Zysman and Tyson, 2019). They are even ready to follow the recommendations and conditions which Apple defines to promote their ideas, which explains the similarities of Apple ads in different regions. re:Store follows the same strategy, so all of the above approaches are applicable to the company under analysis.
Nevertheless, the reseller has finalized some of the marketing points, it is necessary to analyze them. In terms of their technical characteristics, most of the models may be compared with other highly technological devices offered by other giants in the market, like Samsung or HTC. re-Store does not have specific secrets of its success, but researchers find that its exclusivity technique helps the company achieve good results in almost every marketing strategy (Zysman and Tyson, 2019). There are many examples of organizations producing specific offers to make people return or visit social networks regularly and learn innovations. It does not take much time to make a certain group of shoppers feel like a chosen one and establish solid business relationships that prove high quality, loyalty, and trust.
The offered managerial technique is used as the basis for Apple’s operations, but employees constantly improve different elements of work and continue experimenting with price changes and cost analysis. re:Store proves that it is not obligatory to make special offers. It may be enough to turn the already existing line of smartphones into a new product with unique and exclusive background (Zysman and Tyson, 2019). As a result, this decision helps the company promote the popularity of the chosen device and control the activities with other products and the choices of potential buyers.
Evaluating one release experience shows that this marketing method can bring different positive and negative results. If one iPhone model is available for users through one provider, it may be difficult to avoid supply problems with other models produced with time. Customers who want to possess a particular smartphone model have to spend much time online (Zysman and Tyson, 2019). Stakeholders want to find out how people cope with their emotions and conditions under which it is necessary to wait much time for a new iPhone.
Such a limited supply could provoke tensions between the company and the customer and between customers because someone has already got the product, and someone must wait. Not many people can manage their hunger for new products, and their emotions and attitudes toward what is happening are hard to predict. Such a desire to have a new iPhone is uncontrollable, and the task of re:Store and similar companies is to create favorable conditions and not to provoke despair or dissatisfaction with services (Zysman and Tyson, 2019). On the one hand, it is a risky trick for a company to lose its clients. On the other hand, it is a unique possibility to create a highly expected and demanded product.
Taking the offered example and marketing analysis, it is correct to say that this strategy is ambiguous because, in addition to the sense of exclusivity, personal issues and new emotions emerge. Apple is good at demonstrating how the exclusivity technique can work (Zysman and Tyson, 2019). It is expected that Apple representatives can manage conflicting situations. There is a hardly remarkable line between the advantages and disadvantages of this technique. Therefore, iPhone production and advertising are always interesting and provocative for many organizations.
In total, creating controversies about iPhones is the demonstration of how re:Store benefits with free advertising. If the company reduces commercial content and underlines the power of human desire to possess something, the ad works on its own. It is enough to create a forum for users to share opinions, and the product is introduced and marketed from various aspects by people for free. Apple and re:Store know how to make profits from where it is less expected, and their campaigns are not as significant as a chance for users to share their thoughts, knowledge, and attitudes.
References
Apple. (2021). Apple newsroom. Web.
Howmuch. (2021). The largest brands of the world 2020. Web.
Mas, S. (2018). Definition and analysis of the market for the Apple Watch. GRIN Verlag.
SAP. (2021). Products analytics overview. Web.
Statista. (2021). Apple – statistics & facts. Web.
Zysman, J. & Tyson, L. (2019). American industry in international competition. Government policies and corporate strategies. Cornell University Press.