Corporate Brand Identity And Brand Performance: A Case Study Of Apple Inc.

Significance of Corporate Brand Identity

Question:

Discuss about the Corporate Brand Identity and Brand Performance.

The report talks about the corporate brand identity and brand performance. Apple Company has been selected to explain the brand identity and performance. Apple Inc. is one of the biggest brands in the world. The report presents a brief overview of the apple brand strategies and it also explains the SWOT and CBBE model of this company. Another side, it provides some suggestions for future performance of the Apple Inc.

Corporate brand identity is the combination and arrangement of a company logo which includes typestyle, logo visual, and name, tagline and description statement used with a company logo that communicates a three and four words message about the company business and values (Hatch & Schultz, 2008).

The brand identity plays a significant role for every company. The significant of brand identity are discussed as below:

Personality: A brand identity presents the values and personality of the company brand. Therefore brand identity should be effective to communicate the corporate overall message and it should promote the business goals.

Consistency: The corporate brand identity creates and develops a consistent message in the market. Hence, it plays important role to maintain consistency in the market.

Differentiation: A brand identity helps to differentiate the company business from the competition.

Awareness: A brand identity creates and increases awareness of the customers in the market.

Loyalty: An effective and valuable brand identity can help to build and maintain loyalty and trust among customers (Heding, Knudtzen & Bjerre, 2008).

Apple brand has been selected for this report. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology corporation which was founded by Apple Steven Wozniak and Steven Jobs on 3 January 1977. It provides innovative and effective products and services to customers. The apple logo is one of the best logos around the world. It is the ninth biggest company in the world by revenue (Hayes & Kruger, 2014).

The Apple products include iMac, iPod, Apple II, iTunes music store, iBook, iPhone Smartphone, iPad tablet computer, the Mac personal computers, Titanium power book G4, Apple watch and keynote. Apple branding strategy focuses and monitors on the emotions. It provides online services also such as iCloud, iOS app store, iTunes Store, and Mac app store and apple music. After Samsung, it is the second largest company in mobile phone manufacturer. It enjoys largest brand loyalty in the world (Montgomery, 2008).

Overview of Apple Inc.

Teenagers, adults, business people, young children and kids are considered the target customers of Apple Company. Teenagers and college students use iPods and pads for many reasons. Business people use apple products to finish the work with more efficiently and to communicate and converse with clients. Adults use Apple products for daily routines work such as calls, phone, map, directions, cameras and internet connections. Apple target customers’ play significant role by revenue and profits perspective of the company (Gandomi & Haider, 2015). 

There are many competitors of Apple Inc. and the company always tries to beat and overcome on its competitors. Google is the most important competitor in real term of Apple Inc. Samsung also considers the biggest competitor of Apple Company because Samsung steals the ideas and plans of apple company, reproduce them and sell them products less than Apple prices. Samsung is producing TV, Tablet, and smartphones at lower standard and prices than apple and Ipads. PayPal, amazon.com, Dell, Google, and Microsoft are the other competitors of Apple company. It plays important role in Smartphone industry. In this industry there are various competitors of Apple Inc., they are such as Nokia, Microsoft, HTC, Blackberry, Samsung, and Google. On the other side, Apple measures the geographical performance of the company. The geographical performance of apple is unique and effective compared to other competitors. Apple has an excellent executive management team and it makes an effective business strategy to expand its business. The geographical performance plays a significant role in the progress of Apple Inc. It uses some geographical models also to measure the performance of the business as well as employees (De Wit & Meyer, 2010). The apple revenues and geographical segment revenue for the fiscal year were approx 2015 $234 billion revenues and Net profit of $53 billion.

Apple’s points of difference focus on discussing how iPhone 6 plus competes with other Android Smartphone brands areas that generate a point of difference for the brand. While points of parity focus on discussing how and why iPhone 6 competes with other Smartphone brands in all the areas that generate a point of parity for the product and brand.

The point of difference makes the product unique and effective from other competitors in the same product group towards benefits and attributes. It means consumers do not find the same products in another competitive brand. On the other hand, the point of parity does not make the product unique and effective compared to the other brands (Shneiderman, 2010).

Apple's Branding Strategies

Positioning statement refers to the values and significance proposition plans of product to the target market. Positioning implements all the key elements of the marketing mix such as price, product, place, and promotion. The company makes good vision and mission statement to the progress of the company. Positioning is the process of identifying and analyzing an appropriate and suitable market for the product and services (Gupta, 2014).

Apple company uses the Apple brand to become compete and successful across the various competitive market in the world. The demand for Apple products is increasing day by day. It offers good customer services by selling its product in the market (De Chernatony, 2010). It is using innovative and excellent technology for products to attract its customers. The Apple iPhone sales are showing in below diagram which is increasing year by year.

(Source: Business Insider, 2016)

A survey is being conducted about the Apple smart phones. There are some general and specific questions have been given here to conduct the survey. They are discussed as below. 

General questions

Question 1: Have the people purchased the product from Apple Inc.?

Question 2: Are they satisfied with the product quality?

Specific questions

Is Apple Inc better, the same, or worst than other brands? 

Why do persons think Apple’s products are more popular than competitors?

5 person opinions have been taken to answering these above-mentioned questions which are discussed as below.

Person 1: The first person answers that he has purchased the products of Apple Inc and he is fully satisfied the services of Apple Inc. In his opinion, apple brand is the best brand than other brands in the world. He tells that apple products are much better than other products.

Person 2: The second person tells that he has not purchased Apple Inc. products but he has heard the services of Apple Inc. So he wants to purchase the products of Apple in future. But he thinks that apple brand is good than others.

Person 3: The third person gives the unique and different opinion that he does not want to use the Apple products due to high prices of the brand. So he will not buy the Apple products in future.

Person 4: The fourth person tells that features of Apple Inc. are not good than other brands like Samsung, Microsoft. There are some limited features available in Apple products.

Apple's Target Customers and Competitors

Person 5: The fifth person shares his opinion that services of Apple products are good but too much costly. So he suggests that Apple Inc. should reduce the prices of products.

The customer brand based equity model is developed by the Kevin Lane Keller.  It is the way to analyze and identify the value of the specific brand in the minds of consumers. It increases the popularity of the apple brand and increases the options of profitability of the brand. This model gives guidance to Apple managers for analyzing the marketing programs which can be helped to improve the values of the company brand. If the company has effective CBBE model then it can achieve the higher profit and revenue and it can achieve the goals, vision, and mission of the company. This model is essential for the successful brand management. There are four factors CBBE model such as brand loyalty, brand awareness, brand association and perceived quality (Keller, Parameswaran & Jacob, 2011).

The SWOT analysis is very useful to Apple Inc Company to identify and analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the company. SWOT analysis is used by the managers and leaders of the Apple Inc. The SWOT analysis of Apple Inc. is discussed as below.

Strengths: SWOT analysis helps to identify and analyze the highest strengths of the company. There are some strengths of Apple Inc are such as highest profit margins and revenue, strong brand image and effective innovation process. Apple is known for the innovative and intensive growth business strategies.

Weaknesses: SWOT also analyzes and identify the weaknesses of the apple company. Weaknesses create barriers and obstacles in the organization. There are some weaknesses of the company like high selling prices and cost and limited distribution network. It also imposes restrictions on the business strategies (Wheelen & Hunger,2011).

Opportunities: The opportunities play a significant role in the business of the company. Opportunities affect the business strategies of the association. There are some significant business opportunities of Apple Inc. which are discussed as below.

• Creation and formation of new product lines
• Distribution expansion network
• Rising demands for Smartphone and tablets

Through the opportunities, the company can expand and explore its business and various products. The company can beat and overcome on competitors through these effective opportunities.

Threats: SWOT analysis of apple identifies and focuses on the threats which present in the market and environment. The threats of the company are such as imitation and aggressive competition.  All these threats influence the growth of the business. So the company should take suitable and appropriate actions to prevent all these threats (Thompson & Martin, 2010)

There are some suggestions are providing for the successful future performance of the apple brand. They are discussed as below.

• The company should make good and innovative marketing strategies to take the benefits of the brand and it must develop some new products also. The company should make unique vision and mission statement for the growth of the business.
• A generalized company mission and vision should be implemented at every age of the hierarchy.
• The company should develop the innovative culture for the employees and members within the organization.
• It should shift and assign more responsibilities to COO for the future transition.
• Apple Inc. should explore and expand various retail channels to maximize and achieve potential sale and profit and it should minimize the various risks in growing market.
• It should build and maintain brand reputation, loyalty, and trust for the achievement of goals and objectives in the future.
• The company should expand and develop new products and services and it should maintain good communication with investors (Guffey & Loewy, 2010).
• The company should maintain good economic position to increase its market share in the market.
• It should improve its website sale system to create and maintain convenience for its customers.
• It should reduce the prices of products and it should maintain the same quality standards.
• The company should focus on the differentiated lifestyle branding of the products.
• It should improve the quality and standard of products and services and the company should improve the brand position and it should expand its business through geographical basis (Coronel & Morris, 2016).
• It should invest highly amount in the business to expand its market and it should create and develop effective opportunities to local professionals in their countries which would provide support to real customers for accumulating the needs and requirements.
• It must produce and develop customized products and services so the people can use them globally.
• It should not waste the resources and it should provide medical facilities to employees so than perform good work.
• A global communication process should be introduced by the company to communicate with investors and shareholders.
• The company should provide adequate and regular training to employees and it should provide proper facilities to employees.
• It should enhance the co-branding to reduce the cost of products.
• It should critically focus and evaluate the secondary brand association, point of parity, point of difference and different target groups (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010).

Conclusion

The report is based on the corporate brand identity of Apple Company. It explains the significance of corporate brand and its performance. Now it is concluded that Apple Inc. is performing good work day by day but still some improvements are needed.  The company should develop new technologies and it should produce some new and innovative products

References

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