The Secret of Apple's Success (PDF)

Inhaltsangabe:Introduction:
At the end of the year 2009, Apple surprised the Wall Street by announcing record-breaking profits, as the Californian technology company continues to defy the recession.
By 2010, Apple had sold 250 million of its portable music devices answering to the name ¿iPod¿, a synonym in the mp3-player market. In the third quarter of 2009, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, was celebrating a record profit of $1.67 billion. ¿This is going to be huge¿ the CEO said when they launched, in 1998, the all new iMac, a personal all in one case desktop computer. And he was proved correct!
Their major competitor, Microsoft, as well as others, has suffered from the recession and as a result, they have made a part of their workforce redundant, whereas Apple chose to expand and trump their own stock records every month.
According to the CEO Steve Jobs, a lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the correct way for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.
Apple does not behave like the mass. With their unique recipe for success, they were able to ¿step out of the crowd¿ As a result of their uniqueness, they have loyal fans.
The CEO Steve Jobs stated before Apple launched the Macintosh, ¿we¿ve got to be a great Marketing company¿. This quotation shows Apple¿s main focus is on marketing. It is a key success factor for Apple and the researcher¿s focus for this project.
Aims and Objectives:
In this project the author aims to investigate, with particular reference to the example of Apple, why a few brands are able to charge higher prices for their products and sell more of them than their competitors. The research is based on traditional- and Cult-marketing which contributes to Apple¿s profitability success.
Therefore, the researcher has identified the following objectives:
Explore Apple¿s strategic change in 1997 which brought the company back to profitability, considering the launch of Mac.
The whole history of the company was not ¿a bed of roses¿, Apple also experienced a time of near bankruptcy. Therefore the author explored Apple¿s strategic change in 1997 which saved Apple¿s future. The researcher applied Apple¿s new vision and strategy on the example of the Macintosh which was the first product that was all new developed and re-launched after the strategic changes.
Analyze Apple¿s traditional Marketing [...]