5.

PERCEPTION OF BRAND (APPLE) IN MIND OF CONSUMERS:

Consumer Perception of Apple in USA: SOURCE- Statista

Apple’s iconic branding strategy has always focused on emotions—bolstered by a forward-
thinking creative visionary, Steve Jobs. Since the brand's inception in 1976, Apple has put a
priority on building a community of dedicated fans in an almost religious fashion. By
maintaining an aura of secrecy surrounding the inner workings of their brand, the hype
surrounding their product releases is unrivalled; creating conversations among both techies
and laymen alike.
Apple have always positioned themselves as something different; they "Think different."
Unlike any other tech company, the nuts and bolts of their business model, i.e. what their
products actually do, is not what really what brings in sales.
Their consumers don't think: "I want this because it's a Dual-SIM, 64GB, 12-megapixel hexa-
core processing smartphone." They think: "I want this because it's an Apple iPhone." This
statement majorly reflects consumer’s perception of Apple as a whole.
It symbolises exclusivity, luxury, technologically advanced smartphone, status symbol etc
for its consumers and this is exactly the brand perception of Apple among its consumers.
The air of premium exclusivity that Apple employs when promoting new product releases,
and the meticulous attention to the aesthetics of its products, has enabled the Apple brand to
be associated with luxury in the eyes of its followers. And that is what many of its consumers
are paying a premium for: a symbol of status that is driven by emotion, not practicality.
Apple has been able to build a lifestyle-brand by making Apple mean “Creative” in the sub-
conscious minds’ of consumers. No-one will claim you’ll become more ‘creative’ by using
Apple products, but you will belong to the ‘creative-class’.
Apple has built a brand perception among its consumers as brand that fosters creativity, has
built immense trust over the years, focusses on continuous improvement and has created a
brand experience for its consumers.

10. ANALYSIS OF APPLE’S BRAND POSITIONING:

Positioning of a brand is a marketing effort and can only be done through promotion and
advertising. A company’s brand identity, its elements, its product and its
communication, all play an important role in positioning a product. Positioning is an
emotional value that you have towards a brand.

Apple is all about the experience, it goes after the emotional branding something which is felt
in the heart and the mind of the customer. Apple brand is reflected through their core
beliefs about innovation, design, and imagination. 

All these 3 beliefs are strongly reflected and promoted through their products, advertisements
and customer experiences. Apple is positioned as a luxury brand that carries a huge emotional
connection and loyalty among its customers.

Below are the factors which have contributed to the positioning of Apple in the market
and its analysis is listed below:

Brand Identity: All the intangible brand assets like Apple’s brand values, its culture,
employees, Brand colors, Tagline, Tone of voice, Type of Imagery etc all these elements
contribute in forming a specific position in the minds of the customer.
Product Design and Quality: Since its inception, Apple has been rolling out products which
have been an epitome of design and quality. Apple Macintosh was the first personal computer
to have a mouse and graphical interface for a user. Apple’s iPod made the old ugly
walkman’s put to shame.

Apple has always come up with innovative technology and improved designs and this, in
turn, has led them to have a strong command in the market and ask premium prices for their
products.

Advertisements: “The less the Better”: Apple always followed “The Less the Better”
philosophy – Clear and straight messaging, and usage of minimalistic colours is what has
worked wonders for Apple.  The usage of mediums to promote their messaging also plays an
important role in positioning Apple.

Apple has positioned itself to be a lifestyle product for wealthy people, innovators and people
with good jobs.
Apple has become a desired product but not easily affordable. This premium positioning
helps Apple in the long term. With inflation in wages, affordability, more people can afford
Apple products in future, thus increasing sales by reaching out to a larger audience with time,
and when people can afford to buy Apple products they do not haggle about price, price
would be secondary and the image of having an Apple product is more important.
Four years ago, very few people could afford a smart iPhone in India, but today the situation
has changed, iPhone is becoming part of mainstream market as affordability has increased.
Apple's core competence remains delivering exceptional experience through superb user
interfaces. The distinctive feature of each of Apple Pay and Apple Watch remains their ease
of use and elegantly simple use and this ensures efficient and promising brand positioning.

9. BRAND EXPLORATORY:
A) Brand Association:

As we can see from the above brand map, Apple is strongly associated with “innovation” and
“high-tech” as they are the closest to the Apple circle, whereas (in this example), they are
these directly associated with terms further away, such as “fun” and “young”.

But this does not mean that Apple is not associated with these aspects – instead they are more
strongly associated with the attributes and attitude statements that are closer to them on the
brand map.

We can also see that “Easy to Use” is positioned away from Apple and slightly closer to
Samsung. To make sense of this on the brand map, we need to understand what the map is
designed to do. In this case, Samsung is less directly associated with (as compared to Apple)
with many of the attributes on the map. Both brands have products that are easy to use, but
Samsung (being weaker on some of the other statements) has “easy to use” as one of its
stronger associations – as compared to Apple who is the strongest for “innovation” and
“high-tech”.

B) Memorability Source:
People are regularly bombarded with logos in an attempt to improve brand recognition, and
logos are often designed with the central purpose of memorability. The ubiquitous Apple logo
is a simple design and is often referred to as one of the most recognizable logos in the world. 
Apple has managed to foster memorability among its consumers through recurring focus on
constant innovation. Founded in 1976 and launching a Mac with some innovative features
and evolving it over the next 10 years has brought about constant integration of innovation
into the Mac. In the 1990s it failed to launch a new innovate product, customers were getting
a bit tired of the Mac and sales declined for nearly 10 years. But, then came an avalanche of
amazing products that conquered the world: IPod, Iphone, IPad and now Electric Vehicles are
in the pipeline. A variety of products leading to a massive growth over the last 10 years has
been a major source of robust memorability for Apple.
C) Meaningful Source & Description:
Apple products come from a very reliable source as the company has built credibility over the
years and every product from respective portfolio has suitable and detailed description that
comes along with it. This, henceforth adds meaningful source and description for the brand
Apple, building its credibility further.
D) Likeability Source:

Reasons for likeability of Apple are as follows:

1. Head Turner
Apple is a huge technical industry on the whole. Everyone knows about the speed with which
Apple has grown and is growing. In an edition of Weird Magazine stated that “Apple
represents the shiny future of the tech industry”. It makes Apple products a head-turner
because everyone believes that Apple is the new future.
2. Look Sturdy
The stylish look of Apple products is one of the many reasons why everyone is so crazy
about Apple products. Apple products are so damn good looking that they must use high-
quality materials. The designing of the products is done by keeping in mind the consumer’s
needs.
3. Safe and Secure
Apple products are believed to be very secure and safe from all scammers.
4. Innovation
There isn’t another company in the world you could point to that innovated as consistently, or
across as many fields as Apple has. Steve Jobs and his team work hard to introduce
innovation in the tech industry. It has given a different angle to the wireless and touchscreen
technology. Apple tends to give its customers what they want before they even want it.
5. Followed by Other Services
Nowadays, most of the other services are designed to keep Apple products in mind. The
Scion and the new Honda Civic now have connectors that are compatible with the iPod.
These eliminate the need for those annoying FM transmitters to play songs from your iPod.
Many sales websites that have an electronic section will mostly have a separate section for
Apple products.
6. Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs has a great influence on the company as well as the people. He is a very creative
and intelligent person. He bought the company into the business when it needed his help. In
fact, there are people out there that get every single new Apple device just because Steve Jobs
was its creator.
7. Creative Advertising
The marketing of Apple products is done in a very intelligent way. The commercials are very
creative and very much attractive. For example, “Mac Vs. PC” commercials made you hate
PC for being useless.
8. Easy to Learn and Use
Apple products are easier to use as compared to other PCs. The Mac OS is far from any of the
useless trial versions of the software. Also, the speed of the system, iLife, etc. is much faster
as compared with others. People believe that Apple products are very easy to operate with a
very nice and user-friendly interface.
E) Extent of Transferability:
The transferability of brand is low. This is because all the products use a unique trade-marked
name like iPhone or iPod etc, although they all use Apple’s brand values and position.
F) Adaptability of Brand as Evidenced so far:
Apple has been known as a very adaptable brand all over the world. One such example is-
how it adapted according to Indian markets. In order to compete with the primary Indian
phone leader (BlackBerry), Apple had rolled out a pricing plan for phones that allows
customers to purchase phones over a longer-term payment plan. They had also reduced the
sale price of the phone itself to approximately $93USD when converted from rupees.
Apple has adapted immensely over the years. It started from computer-based company and
moved in various domains from Ipods to laptops etc. If Apple had just remained a computer
company, though, it is uncertain that the company would still even be in business.
It took only about a year to develop the iPod, but its launch radically changed the company.
Building on the success of this portable media player, Apple then effectively created the
touchscreen smartphone industry before then moving on to make the tablet computer concept
a real product and an actual success. Once just a computer company, Apple is now a
consumer electronics giant and has adapted immensely over the years.