Ch. 2 - Strategic Planning for Competitive Advantage

Strategic Planning for Competitive Advantage

 

According to the book, MKTG 5, Strategic planning can be defined as the "process of creating and maintaining a fit between the organization's objectives and resources and the evolving market opportunities," and a company's competitive advantage are the factors that cause customers to buy their products and not the competition's.

For any company marketing plan is very important. According to the book, MKTG 5, marketing plan is "a written document that acts as a guidebook of marketing activities for the marketing managers". Marketing plan includes, Situational Analysis, SWOT Analysis and Marketing Objectives.

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, has been a vital part of the company's strategic planning. Apple has been very successful in these last years because of the fresh, imaginative way to think and do its business: a winning combination of excellent products, great style and design, great strategy, innovative marketing, sleek and desirable communications. Apples strategic planning include successful marketing objective. The objectives of Apple Inc. are to maximize profit and expand their sales to customers who have not yet own any Apple’s products. And to be the dominant high-tech brand in the whole world. They also want create products that will be useful, manageable, sleek and that will appeal to consumers all over the world, with a special focus on developed countries like Canada and the US, Europe, and the populous Asian countries like China, Japan, India and South Korea.

A company’s competitive advantage is when a firm has an advantage over its competitors, allowing it to gain greater sales margins and retain more customers than its competition.

       i.          One competitive advantage of Apple is the multiple Products That Integrate as One. The iPhone is obviously unique on its own qualities, a touch-screen, app-based product that clearly has advantages over the clunker, more dated Blackberry made by Research in Motion.

     ii.          Secondly Apple is also set separately from its competition by its combination of hardware and software, by the content gate-keeper strategy embodied in iTunes, and by their successful retail strategy.

SWOT Analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) for Apple.

Strengths:

1. Apple is the founder of advanced and high-tech quality products like iPod, iPhone, Ipad and Mac.

2. It has an internationally recognized brand name.

3. Strong existence in education sector.

4. It gained large segment of devoted customers of “Apple culture”.

5. Apple has Strong Research & Development Department.

6. It retail stores provide the eye-catching products and experience of Apple’s software.

Weaknesses:

1. The new Apple TV just got a small upgrade, in the form of live video streaming for MLB and NBA games

2. The loss of Steve Jobs the founder of Apple.

3. Failure of two notable products namely Mac Mini Apple TV.

Opportunities:

1. New technologies and strategic deals offer opportunities for Apple.

2. Growing market of “Green” and energy efficient.

3. Good relationship through joint venture with other big companies’ pair to bring out new “successes”.

5. Growing demand of online music and other applications like cloud based services.

Threats:

1. Shares of Apple have increased over $100, or close to 25%, just in 2012 alone. Yet it’s only good enough to rank it 45th in the S&P 500.

2. Expensive products as compared to other competitors such as Dell, Nokia, Microsoft.

3. Competition in technology with other vast PC industries like Dell, HP, Nokia, Samsung, HTC and Android.