Marketing Manager for Apple Iphone

The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines marketing as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large" (White, 2012, p.1.1). Value is an essential part of marketing and consists of trade offs between the advantages and sacrifices required to get the benefits. The marketing goal is to convince potential buyers that the product is a good value and to buy the good or service. Companies want customers to exchange money for the products value. “Marketer’s objective is to develop and offering and price it in such a way that its value attracts customers and creates a profitable bottom line” (White, 2012, p.1.3). The marketing process is crucial to any company’s business operations. The marketing manager has to look over all marketing aspects, which includes: setting specific marketing goals, planning and execution of plans to meet the company goals, and tracking the progress to reach the goals.
Apple is a worldwide known company; that introduced the first Iphone in 2007. The first week Apple sold one million units and sales continued to hit records. “Beyond corporate publicity, the iPhone was selected as ‘the invention of the year’ in 2007 by Time magazine1 for its design, usability, advanced computing ability, and potential to change the mobile telecom ecosystem” (Kim, 2011, p.261). Since the first Iphone Apple has gone through five generations of Iphones. In 2013 Apple came out with a highly anticipated upgrade to its Iphone 5. Apple decided to upgrade the Iphone 5, coming out with two new versions, the 5s and the 5c. The Iphone 5s has better technology and updated processing system, while the Iphone 5c has the same operating system on the less expensive entry- level phone. This paper will assess how the new Iphone is marketed in the U.S and foreign markets, its competition, customer value, and its potential for a marketing campaign.
People must acquire good and services to fulfill needs and desires. Customers value products by how they can use the product and its benefits. “The goal is for you to create a business where customers believe that it is in their best interests to buy from you. And they'll do that because they receive the quality and value they want and expect. Then your goal is to get better and better at doing this” (Woods, 1996). Consumers’ purchases have been put into four categories called the four utilities of customer value. The fours utilities of customer value are form, time, place, and ease of possession. Apple has kept the four utilities of customer value in mind when creating the Iphone 5s/5c.
The first utility is form, which defined by White is, “ attributes that make an offering useful to customers” (2012, p. 1.3). Companies must make a product useful and benefit customers. The Iphone 5s/ 5c does this well by providing a device that looks attractive, convenient, and allows people to access the Internet, camera, music, and much more at any time. The Iphone 5s is the first 64 bit smart phone in the world and its new A7 chip has two times faster graphic performance. Also, included in the new Iphone 5s is a new processor, the M7 chip, which provides a better power efficient phone. Other new features consist of, a new iSight camera, touch ID (fingerprint identity sensor), and the phone now supports more LTE bands than ever before. Even adding all these new components to the Iphone 5s, Apple kept the customer in mind and maintained the thin, light design that society seems to love. Now all these new attributes are in addition to the already highly efficient regular Iphone 5, making the new Iphone 5s even more beneficial to customers. Not only will they have a better, faster phone, but also it reduces other products that a customer must buy. For example, customers do not need to carry additional laptop because the