Findings
Apple
Apple’s retail approach is consistent with its marketing messages of exceptional items at high-end venues with value pricing, reinforced by advertising activities and educated merchants. Despite intense competition in the technology business, Apple has been able to produce goods for its high-end customer base. Today, the firm provides the most exemplary customer satisfaction in its virtual and physical storefronts.
Retail merchandising strategies to drive sales that Apple applies in its work include customer location consideration. While many technology companies created online stores, Apple took the opposite approach and constructed brick-and-mortar locations worldwide. Apple has now established itself as an internet shop. Apple’s retail locations have proven to be effective since they draw millions of customers each year. Nonetheless, internet retail stores enable shoppers to view items and make purchases online with delivery services.
Furthermore, Apple places great exertion and attention on its product narrative. The corporation has frequently delayed product distribution in order to assure product quality. This positioning technique has aided Apple in gaining customer confidence. As a result, the firm has matched great items with value pricing, and people line up for high-quality goods regardless of price. It can only focus on high-quality items to safeguard its brand and market share reputation.
In the recent past, Apple employed an unorthodox strategy of customer choice. Namely, customers could choose from a limited number of versions and options the firm provided. For example, Apple launched many colorful iPhones for individuals who desired other colors. Yet, other items were only in black and white, making it easier for customers to acquire Apple products. Apple’s product portfolio has always consisted of a few gadgets that reflect the apex of innovation, with no rivals supporting obsolete technology. Nowadays, Apple offers more phones and laptops to its consumers and prospects. They differ on various variables, including physical dimensions, image quality, storage, form, and headphone socket presence. However, with little product differences but significant pricing discrepancies, making a decision feels more difficult than it should be.
Apple picks its retail stores with care and precision, which are essential for marketing environments. The firm requires all partners to satisfy specified product presentation and positioning requirements. Even more attention is paid to visual merchandising in retail spaces. Apple has been rightfully praised for its distinctive style of retail store architecture. Apple has constructed a number of freestanding flagships throughout the world in recent years. The picturesque settings, dramatic façade, and design features influenced by their host nations distinguish these high-profile businesses.
The corporation advertises its products via the media to reach new customers, although it is not the only method of exposure to merchandise. In physical retail stores and showrooms, Apple’s windows give buyers a clear perspective of the exhibited goods, allowing passers-by to glimpse almost everything and inviting them to come in and purchase. When one enters an Apple Store, they will notice that all the laptop computer screens are angled in one particular. The screen’s position allows visitors to view it and encourages people to utilize the product. Furthermore, all the goods in the shop have Internet connectivity, allowing consumers to use anything they want, whenever they want. Additionally, Apple introduced a distinctive store design to differentiate its locations from one another. The business intends to integrate the native elements of its future shop location and transform it into a showroom inside the store.
There is a strategy for attracting customers through visual merchandising as well. Namely, Apple shops are all located in high-end areas of established and emerging economies. Furthermore, the corporation strategically opens outlets across the world. Customers can quickly access the stores because they are in high-traffic areas. Another essential requirement is that Apple stores be located in visually appealing structures. The Apple retail shop is simply another Apple product. They are sleek, made of high-quality materials, such as crystalline, hardwood, and shiny steel, and have a luxury appearance. The retail shop is subjected to the same quality checks as the items to ensure that the client experience is on par.
Additionally, Apple shops and showrooms are designed to handle a large number of customers. When one walks into an Apple retail shop, the encounter is the same and consistent even though the architecture is unique. Namely, the advertisements and windows are contemporized, while the most recent goods are shown. The inventory is abundant, and everything is neat. As for product grouping, the goods are positioned at precise distances and bonded under where necessary with transparent tape. Tables are designed with spaces to cover anti-theft equipment, and items are cleaned, running demonstrations, or in good enough condition to allow customers to test them. Apple is also famous for its usage of white space. Their minimalistic and sophisticated in-store displays are straightforward, putting the front and center of the item, letting consumers touch them as they move without causing clutter.
Apple has adopted an e-business approach and mobile applications for greater customer reach. Customers may shop online as well as directly from their iPhones and get free delivery and refunds on items. Additionally, Apple communicates with its consumers through Web PR. Users may use their Apple account information to communicate directly with the corporation. All items, features, and pricing are available on Apple’s website.
All Apple stores have been created to be showrooms with the goal of providing the best possible customer experience. When it pertains to Apple, all employees are thoroughly scrutinized and educated before they ever engage with a consumer. The company teaches individuals how to resolve problems by talking to consumers and being empathic with them to put themselves in the client’s shoes. The company projects a message that a business has to be more than just a location to buy things but to help people improve their lives as well.
McDonald’s
McDonald’s is an effective fast-food restaurant company with a consistent marketing strategy. Regarding McDonald’s effective takeover of one of the world’s major fast-food industries, localization is critical to the company’s ability to sustain its competitiveness. Flexibility and inventiveness are essential aspects of the worldwide success of McDonald’s restaurant businesses. The organization creates a diversified range of services and items to fulfill the demands of a varied customer market based on client demographics, geographic, and economic concerns. Localization contributes significantly to the approach. Using this strategy, McDonald’s adapts to the demands of consumers as dictated by the demographics of distinct locations. McDonald’s has had a lot of success in adapting. The plan necessitates increased communication and manufacturing costs. In addition to the winning strategies, the company’s marketing mix is customizable, enabling it to be customized to the demands of the local marketplace regarding delivery, promotions, and price. In this strategic area of operations administration, McDonald’s aims to build locations with the most significant market reach. McDonald’s marketing mix comprises venues such as restaurants, booths, the company’s website, and smartphone app. McDonald’s connects customers in both traditional and virtual methods through these places.
McDonald’s supplying ordinary hamburgers, Big Macs, and cheeseburgers are an example listed on the stock plan marketing. Several things on their menu remain constant and do not alter, attracting devoted patrons to the dining chain. Product innovation is critical to McDonald’s business model since it has assisted the company in remaining competitive by adhering to quality, services, cleaning, and value. It has consistently positioned itself as a pleasant location to spend time with family and friends. Moreover, it pioneered happy meals with a well-known mascot, Ronald McDonald. The product includes a toy with excellent value, function, and quality. Beyond the toy, a happy meal facilitates classic play patterns such as collectability, imagination, and role-playing.
McDonald’s builds its product based on the value offer of delivering a superior product at a reasonable price supplied fast and uniformly across the world. McDonald’s executes marketing by dividing its markets and customers, targeting the appealing groups, and placing its identity accordingly in order to complete value creation. McDonald’s pays attention to local variances in order to target particular markets. In a multi-cultural nation like India, McDonald’s addressed local populations and consumer demand. They faced difficulties in a country in which the cow is revered and adored, and Muslims do not consume port. McDonald’s believed that most Indians were vegans. After doing an extensive study, they created a substitute for pork, such as chicken nuggets and other poultry.
McDonald’s provided a more customized consumer experience and developed a better knowledge and engagement with them. McDonald’s establishes a segmentation strategy by linking criteria such as generation, family structure, and culture with customer demands. McDonald’s effectively categorized its consumers into Children, Parents, Students, and Working Professionals: to target those appealing categories, the firm developed campaigns and designed particular items and locations for their clients. They launched the “Happy Meal,” cartons featuring circus carts holding children’s favorite foods, fruit snacks, and juice. McDonald’s found student lunches for locations that were open 24 hours a day for students. In contrast, they appealed to the hectic schedules of working individuals seeking quick meals.
Per the company’s brand image, McDonald’s purpose is to supply cheap items. As a result, its product offering sizes and pricing are predicated on the most common customer expectations. Some McDonald’s goods, however, are diminished in size to keep them more inexpensive. McDonald’s procedure and capacities design is oriented on efficiency in order to save costs and promote the company’s goals. This integrated strategic management decision focuses on ensuring process efficiency and appropriate capacity to meet market demands. The production line approach is used at McDonald’s to optimize productivity and capacity utilization. The company pays attention to sociological trends as well. McDonald’s recognized that people’s health concerns were growing. As a result, it began expanding its menu to include other salads and chicken products. One can still check the total calories for every item in the online app.
Fast food restaurants’ efforts to advertise to youngsters go well beyond traditional ad spending. To cross-promote its products across channels, the industry collaborates with toy firms and movie producers with whom they have the same target demographic. The most notable example is McDonald’s Happy Meal, where the trendiest children’s toys are packaged as a free promotion. This creates the demand for Happy Meals and toys, resulting in a natural connection between McDonald’s and the toy business. After charges against the company’s manipulative attitude, McDonald’s is reducing the number of french fries in Happy Meals and replacing them with more nutritious products such as apple slices.
McDonald’s employs realism in this area of business decision-making by management. Earlier, the method included increasing space usage in eateries and kiosks rather than concentrating on comfort and vastness. Every detail of a McDonald’s restaurant is carefully prepared to utilize massive data. McDonald’s analytics teams examined every aspect of restaurant operations, from technology and layout to procedures and personnel, to decide how to run as effectively as possible in order to maximize profit. Yet, now McDonald’s is transitioning away from cafeteria-style eating and toward a choice of more modern and distinctive design options. The new aspects cater to their dedicated fan audience of both adults and youngsters by offering vivid colors, different tables, and chairs, as well as strong and comfy lighting.
The new design provides a sophisticated appeal and emits a subtle refinement not typically found in fast-food restaurants by using natural materials such as concrete, steel, and wood, along with soft lighting. The idea behind the style is to let the cuisine stand out against the peaceful background without dominating it with bright colors or design considerations. The kitchen has been transformed into an open cooking space, allowing diners to observe the meal preparation process. Finally, the lights are regulated by a digital system that varies the brightness regularly, providing a warm, pleasant environment in the evening and a more colorful one during the daytime.
McDonald’s utilizes instructive and persuading advertisements; the informational ones seem to be about eating healthily, while the compelling ones occasionally urge people to buy the meal. On TV, they show individuals eating the food and genuinely enjoying it. Moreover, McDonald’s trademark employs strategical merchandising. The color yellow in the logo is eye-catching and is connected with the sun, naturally and quietly boosting viewers’ moods, making the object more pleasant. The color red is engaging and thrilling and entices the observer to act.
Enhanced experience of clients is also achieved with dynamic videos and pictures while increasing revenue with digital menu boards. Customers are drawn to vibrant menu boards in McDonald’s because of their complete motion look. The program enables the streaming high-quality films, dynamic images, and animated text, capturing clients’ emotions during decision-making. It thereby enhances the restaurant experience while also increasing revenues. The company offers a combination meal made up of two or many menu items bundled together and provided to customers at a discounted price. Customers are more likely to pick the cheaper menu item, giving you more significant revenues.
Finally, customers may order their food via the McDonald’s mobile app, pick it up at the restaurant or have it delivered to the car roadside at a predetermined time. The mobile app provides the same features as the in-store terminals, including settings. McDonald’s wants to ensure that consumers have a consistent experience whether they purchase at the counter, through the drive-thru, or one of the modern electronic alternatives. The McDonald’s app has been an enormous success, thanks to marketing campaigns.
Analysis
Apple
Several key implications could be found regarding the fashion marketing and merchandising tactics adopted by the technology company Apple. The results on retail merchandising strategies demonstrated that both tactics are beneficial for retail marketing techniques since people continue to shop online as well as in physical shops, and Apple provides services that satisfy customers’ demands through both channels.
The findings about the product’s narrative suggest that Apple’s high costs are protected by innovation, which is a method for instilling confidence in customers that the goods will solve their difficulties and satisfy their needs. The discovery of the customer’s choices has important implications, one of which is that Apple provides more alternatives than ever. Yet, this tactic confuses the consumer’s purchasing experience: the more options there are, the more difficult it is to choose the perfect one. Apple shops benefit when every product aspect, from the packing to the electricity supply, receives the same attention.
Moreover, it has been discovered that Apple successfully employs visual merchandising in retail spaces to deliver standalone value for prospects, meet consumer needs and develop brand value. This analysis found evidence for the beneficial influence of fashion exposure to merchandise, which is implicated through the consistent setup, design, and maintenance of showrooms. Attracting customers through the possibility of testing Apple’s goods and viewing all the available products contributes to understanding the company’s visual retail approach. Finally, the results confirm that strategies borrowed from the fashion industry regarding grouping goods are suitable for increasing sales and customer experience.
As for online visual merchandising for e-commerce, the results demonstrate two things. First, Apple has successfully positioned its goods online and clearly communicated the pertinent details to the customers. Moreover, the company has adopted mobile marketing and allows to access its store through applications, making it possible to purchase their goods in any comfortable way. Second, Apple still concentrates on physical retail stores, preferring them over putting most of their marketing efforts on e-ecommerce. This result suggests that Apple considers the customer experience more controlled and, thus, profitable through its showrooms.
Thus, these findings support the notion that the technology industry can successfully implement the strategies developed by the fashion industry. Moreover, most of the tactics discussed earlier in the paper could be considered contributors to the brand image and customer attraction by the company of the case study, Apple. However, it should be noted that not all retail store merchandise methods work for Apple. It could be further researched whether some strategies do not result in success because of poor implementation or due to fundamental differences between technology and fashion industries, which prevent the company from triumph.
McDonald’s
The findings regarding merchandising applications suggest that McDonald’s approaches are similar to those of the fashion industry. One of the critical results supposes that trend research plays a significant role in visual merchandising and branding. Moreover, customers’ choice category of merchandising has been shown to contribute to McDonald’s marketing success. Since the target audience of the company is much more varied than for fashion firms, the approach of McDonald’s is more advanced. The cultural sensitiveness was demonstrated to increase the sales of the organization on a global scale. The findings were somewhat surprising in the aspect of clear correlation and similarity between the fashion industry approaches and McDonald’s strategy. Thus, visual merchandising is one of the most central components of the company’s marketing efforts, and other fast-food restaurants might also consider similar tactics for increasing sales.