A Comparative Analysis of Apple and Samsung Regarding their Marketing Mix Strategies

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Introduction

The purpose of this report is to compare and analyse the marketing mix strategies of Apple and Samsung and also the final aim is to create recommendations of the companies. The report starts with a short brief history of both companies Apple and Samsung, afterward, the marketing mix strategies used by both companies and finally a recommendation.

Apple and Samsung are the biggest smartphone companies operating worldwide. This report focusses on these two companies and their marketing mix strategies. Apple and Samsung are very successful in selling their products all over the world and over the last years, they have experienced very high growth but also small decreases.

The marketing mix refers to the set of actions, or tactics, that a company uses to promote its brand or product in the market. The 4Ps in the marketing mix are Price, Product, Promotion, and Place (The Economic Times, n.d.).

Apple’s brief history

Apple Inc. is an American company which was founded by Steven Paul Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Gerald Wayne on April 1, 1976, and is headquartered in Cupertino, CA. The company designs, manufactures and markets personal computers and related personal computing, and mobile communication devices. The company’s products and services include Macintosh computers, iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple TV, Xserve, a portfolio of consumer and professional software applications, peripherals and iOS operating systems, third-party digital content and applications through the iTunes Store and a variety of accessory, service and support offerings. It sells its products worldwide through its retail stores, online stores, and direct sales force and third-party cellular network carriers, wholesalers, retailers, and value-added resellers to the consumer, small and mid-sized businesses, education, enterprise, government and creative markets (Apple Inc., 2019).

Samsung’s brief history

Samsung is a South Korean multinational conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul. Samsung was founded by Lee Byung-chul in 1938 as a trading company. Over the next three decades, the group diversified into areas including food processing, textiles, insurance, securities, and retail. Founded in 1969, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. with the headquartered in Suwon, South Korea. The company’s offerings include home appliances such as TVs, monitors, printers, refrigerators, and washing machines as well as key mobile telecommunications products like smartphones and tablet PCs. Samsung aims to create a new future that positively impacts the entire global community (Samsung, 2019).

Marketing mix strategic used by Apple

Products

  • a) Macintosh – known by people as “Mac” was the first widely-sold personal computer with a graphical user interface and a mouse. Apple Computer introduced the Macintosh in an advertisement during Super Bowl XVIII, on January 22, 1984, and came on sale two days later (Rouse, 2009). Apple’s laptop is the favorite of many consumers because the design is elegant and makes this object look luxurious.
  • b) iPhone – Apple is the first company that introduced the phone without buttons focusing only on the multi-touch smartphone. Since Apple introduced the iPhone, the company has been very successful on the market and since then, millions of smartphones are sold by Apple every year.
  • c) iPad – Not after a very long time since Apple launched the iPhone, Apple came up with a new gadget called iPad. iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., runs the iOS and iPadOS mobile operating systems (iPad, 2019). The first iPad was launched in the spring of 2010.

Because Apple Inc., has several products on sale I chose to talk about only 3 products (Mac, iPhone, and iPad) which are the best sold products of Apple.

Price

Apple has very innovative products which ‘delights’ (Marketing91, 2019) their customers. Apple is superior to its competitors (Samsung, Huawei, LG), most of the Apple products have premium pricing. E.g. MacBook, iPad, iPhone, iWatch are all premium products (Marketing91, 2019). One of the main reasons Apple is using the premium price policy is because of the technology they are using in their products. With so many Apple fans around the world and with the brand value that Apple has, Apple needed premium pricing for all products.

Place

Apple has many various ways to distribute its products

  • a) Apple stores – Apple has its own exclusive stores from where it sells its products (Marketing91, 2019).
  • b) Trade partners – one of their partners is Ingram micro, a company that is distributing Apple products in more than one country. However, there are more strategic exclusive partners of Apple who take care of its distribution (Marketing91, 2019).
  • c) Retail – the trade partners sell through individual handpicked retailers who are authorized to sell Apple products. Because of the premium products of Apple are considered to be luxurious, the distribution is a niche and is given only to premium retailers (Marketing91, 2019).
  • d) Online – a major sale point for Apple is E-commerce as well as its own portal from where it sells a lot of products. Most E-commerce portals have a separate page linked to the Apple home page where consumers can find the desired products, and they can buy from the company’s official website (Marketing91, 2019).

Promotion

Probably each of us has seen at least once an advertising campaign from Apple, where you can see how professional and with a lot of elegance these campaigns are made.

  • a) Elegant promotions – Apple makes very simple promotions and most of their print and creative ads are done with a white and stylish background (Marketing91, 2019).
  • b) Talking to the point – as we see in their promotions, Apple is to the point, that means one ad, one message and one target (Marketing91, 2019).
  • c) Premium media – Apple strongly believes in communication because Steve Jobs himself was a master communicator. Most of Apple’s ads pop up during a product launch, where they show what the product does, and therefore the media keeps running the print very often on the distribution channels (television, social media, billboards, etc.) (Marketing91, 2019).

To complete, this was the marketing mix of Apple Inc. which is showing how great brand Apple is.

Marketing mix strategic used by Samsung

Products

Samsung, like its biggest competitor Apple, has a wide range of products such as Smartphones, Tablets, Laptops, TV’s, etc. The benefit that Samsung has with its products is that there is confidence in all Samsung products due to the way the products are developed. During the last years, Samsung performance was good which means that the company came up with many new, developed and smart products and because of this Samsung is a great competitor for Apple. Samsung is known for its service and customers knew that the company gives fast service for any of its products. Thus, in the marketing mix of Samsung, the product portfolio is one of the strongest points from the company (Marketing91, 2019).

Price

Because Samsung has a wide range of products, the company uses many price strategies. For instance, some price strategies used by Samsung are Skimming price and Competitive price (Marketing91, 2019).

  • a) Skimming price – Samsung’s smartphones are like Apple’s, one of the best in the market, and they are the market leader in terms of the features and USP’s that they provide. Samsung uses skimming price for these products wherein it tries to get a high value from the start before competitors catch up. Once a product is getting old, not in trend or any competitor has launched a similar product, Samsung immediately drops the price to attract customers. (Marketing91, 2019).
  • b) Competitive pricing – this strategy is used for products other than smartphones. This competitive pricing is used for products like televisions, air conditioners, refrigerators, like other competitors Panasonic or LG which sells similar products as Samsung. products. Samsung is known as a great brand but it is not greater than LG for home appliances. Thus, Samsung keeps competitive pricing in various categories to beat the competitor (Marketing91, 2019).

Place

Samsung is present through various channels in the market. It works on the channel marketing concept wherein there are three segments: sales and service dealers, modern retail and distributors. The sales and service dealers handle key accounts for Samsung and are involved in corporate sales. These dealers can open exclusive Samsung showrooms.

The Modern retail segment includes large retailers as Croma, Hypercity, Vijay sales, Vivek’s and any others who are present in the modern electronic retail chain. Because Samsung is a branded product, the retailers are bound to keep Samsung as an alternative or primary product for their customers.

The distribution network for Samsung is the most interesting because in several cities in the world Samsung has a single distributor through whom they distribute throughout a territory. The distributor has a high investment in Samsung and vice versa. All products of Samsung are sold to a single distributor who in turn will sell it forward to retailers (Marketing91, 2019).

Promotion

Samsung uses many ways to promote because they believe in pulling the customer to themselves through advertising but at the same time uses strong tactics to push the product to the customer. Samsung gives many offers and discounts to its trade partners to motivate them to sell Samsung above the competition (Marketing91, 2019).

To complete, this was the marketing mix of Samsung which shows that is a big threat to Apple Inc.

Recommendation

The marketing mix strategic of Apple and Samsung is very well-thought-out because they want to keep and attract as many as possible customers. However, I think that both companies Apple and Samsung should come up with new features or new devices because the customers are more focusing on getting new technology which could make life easier.

Bibliography

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