teachthe4ps.com - For instructors of marketing.

Remember when Apple was known for high prices.  That is no longer the case.  This article provides a nice example that will link to your discussion of skimming and penetration price policies.  In the old days Apple was a niche player known for high prices.  Now it owns some markets (tablet computers, smartphones, portable music players) and benefits from economies of scale.  The company offers even lower prices by keeping older products in its line and offering them for lower prices.  It will be interesting to see how they respond to the new Kindle Fire.  Read more at “Apple’s Lower Prices Are All Part of the Plan” (New York Times, October 23, 2011).  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

There are plenty of articles (even a whole issue of BusinessWeek) paying tribute to Steve Jobs this week.  As much as we respect Jobs, we weren’t going to join the chorus because we didn’t have anything new or specific to marketing to say.  Then we found this 1997 video of Steve Jobs talking to Apple staff.  Jobs had recently returned to the company he founded (he was booted in 1985).

In the video Jobs explains what he thinks “marketing” is — actually explaining positioning — and introduces the new “Think Different” campaign (for a higher quality version of the ad click click here).

“To me, marketing is about values,” he said. “This is a very complicated world, a very noisy world and we’re not going to get the chance to get people to remember us. No company is. So we have to be very clear about what we want people to know about us.”

You might want to provide some context for your students — most of them being only 5 or 6 at that time.  Our students know the successful Apple of today — but Jobs returned to a company crippled by years of losses and record low stock prices.  Apple’s market share in computers was less than 5% (it now may be over 15% based on recent numbers), there were no iPods, iPads, or iPhones.

This might be a nice addition when you cover positioning or advertising.  It might be interesting to ask if this type of positioning works best for certain types of products, and if so, for what type of product.  We also posted this at Learn the 4 Ps.

I have been reading a lot of articles this week about the new line of Amazon Kindles.  The most intriguing of these is the Kindle Fire which appears to provide a worthy competitor to the Apple iPad.  While more limited, the Fire is also less than half the price.  The best article I have found on the new Kindles is from Bloomberg BusinessWeek, “Amazon, the Company That Ate the World” (September 28, 2011).  This article, while long, really digs into the marketing strategy angle from Amazon’s perspective.  It also provides a nice compare and contrast of the marketing strategies of Amazon and Apple — two companies that are bound to have a big impact on American business for many years to come.  The article is also very relevant given our recent post titled “Tablets Drive Online Shopping” (September 30). The article also provides an update to the case scenario on Amazon that opens chapter 3 in each of our books.  We have also posted this at Learn the 4 Ps.

This article provides examples you might find useful when you cover price, competition, marketing strategy planning, new product development or retailing.
 

It is always nice to find articles about marketing research.  This article, “Sentiment Analysis Gives Companies Insight Into Consumer Opinion” (Bloomberg BusinessWeek, March 1, 2011) is an example of a trend in marketing research — real-time analysis of social media data.  Kia, Best Buy, and Viacom are among a handful of firms using…

…a tool that can swiftly analyze large numbers of opinions on the Web, including blogs, the microblogging site Twitter, and social networking service Facebook. It’s called Mass Opinion Business Intelligence and it was developed by an Irvine (Calif.)-based company called WiseWindow. It coughs up a continuous, real-time feed of relevant consumer sentiment, gathered from millions of sites.

The article cites a number of different examples that might be useful in class.  An accompanying slide show of “Most Loved — And Hated — Tech Companies” shows a real example that maps 10 tech companies on a 2×2 matrix — see below.  Check out the slide show and article for a full explanation.

Yes we have posted plenty of articles on Apple.  But students like Apple and listen when I use it as an example in class.  This article, “Apple’s Pricing Decoys” (Bloomberg BusinessWeek, September 1, 2010) analyzes Apple’s pricing strategy and tactics using consumer psychology.  This might be a bit complicated for intro marketing students, but instructors may find the examples useful to carry into classes on pricing or consumer behavior.

This article “The iPad Leads Apple to the Elderly” (Bloomberg BusinessWeek, August 12, 2010) describes how the ease of use of the iPad appeals to the elderly. The examples are mostly from Japan — where a fast growing elderly population make it a prime target market. The examples here work when talking about opportunities (chapter 2 in our books), demographic trends or market segmentation.

You might ask students:  What else Apple could to do make the iPad more appealing to senior citizens?  Encourage them to think about each of the 4 Ps.  [NOTE:  This article has also been posted over at our “Learn the 4 Ps” blog for students.

If the “Get a Mac” campaign is winding down, you may want to review it. Over at AdWeek’s AdFreak.com you can see all 66 (as of this writing) TV spots at “Apple and TBWA’s ‘Get a Mac: The Complete Campaign.” The campaign started in May 2006. Here is one of the earliest ads in the series from October 2006.  [Also posted at "Learn the 4 Ps"]

This is a great article to use when you introduce Price.  I do a lot of shopping online — most of it at Amazon and Apple’s iTunes store.  They make paying easy.  I like to tell my students that the price can include the hassle of paying — so how do you reduce the hassle.  Might stimulate a good in-class discussion, too.  See “The real reason why consumers won’t pay online” (Fortune, July 24, 2010).