People are saying good things as well as about the company. They are saying that the company is building products which are of high quality and which meet their requirements. What is interesting about the products of this brand is that though they are expensive, people are still purchasing the products. They would prefer an expensive iPhone than an equivalent smartphone of another brand like Nokia.
It is apparent that Apple was the first company that came with good touchscreen smartphones (Eadicicco, 2019). Due to the perception that people have – the beginning brand is the one that is mostly trusted, people were affiliated of their product. Also, Apple has a continuous improvement of quality and understanding of the customer needs which has facilitated the design of products which are acceptable to the consumers.
However, there are some clients complaining that the quality of the products they are producing is decreasing in the recent past. For example, a Facebook comments from one of the customers;
“Congrats apple... You've continued to make your reputation in educational environments worse by certain practices you have. Yet one of many reasons I will never pay for any of your products. It's a shame that the company has gone downhill so much from what it used to be” (Cairo, 2018).
The products they are trying to promote includes their iPhone product. This is a very famous product that has wined the hearts of many consumers over other smartphone brands. They are currently trying to promote the message that encryption is the single-most concern for the consumers and there is need to increase this feature in their products.
The marketing challenge that Apple is facing is that it is now neglecting the needs of the consumers. Initially, it was much concerned with the emotional touch and concern of the consumers. But with time, it thought that encryption was a real concern for the consumers. Hence, it changed its marketing strategy to advertise on encryption as a key feature of the iPhone. However, this new feature made it difficult for the consumers to easily navigate the phone and use it without much of limitations. Hence, it gradually lost teste to the consumers (Matyszczyk, 2016).
In one of the complain that Apple iPhone 5c was used by a terrorist, there were some responses made by the company. FBI had decided to take the fight on that iphone. Apple responded by fighting the court order to have the phone hacked when it created a new software which would help government to hack phone passwords. Although this was an immediate solution, it was not benefiting in the long term. Such a software may fall into the hands of wrong people and the same security they are trying to promote would be vulnerable to even more attacks. Instead of responding this way, they would have accepted their fault of concentrating too much on security and instead work to improve on consumer experience (Matyszczyk, 2016).
If I were the manager, I would concentrate on understanding the needs of the consumers. I should not make their experience harder by including features which they would not really need and use.
I have learned that it is important to take care of the consumer’s needs and experiences. We should come up with products that meet their needs and not our needs.
References
Cairo, J. (2018). Apple: Share your Gifts. Retrieved February 3, 2020 from https://www.facebook.com/apple/
Matyszczyk, C. (2016). Apple's biggest problem is a marketing problem. Retrieved from https://www.cnet.com/news/apples-biggest-problem-is-a-marketing-problem/
Eadicicco, L. (2019). Apple's first iPhone changed the world forever — see how the company's iconic smartphone evolved over the past decade (AAPL). Retrieved from https://www.pulselive.co.ke/bi/tech/apples-first-iphone-changed-the-world-forever-see-how-the-companys-iconic-smartphone/4nlpm02
