Apple Market Innovation

Market Innovation

Introduction

“Whatever made you successful in the past won’t in the future.” – Tom Peters.

In a world of rapidly changing market dynamics, any business that is serious about staying ahead of its competitors must make things happen – through constant innovation. A stagnant business risks being stuck in a rut and being overtaken by its competitors. Although some may regard imitation as the sincerest form of flattery, from a strategic marketing perspective, differentiating your products from competitors is essential in creating value for your clients. This particularly applies in growth industries (e.g. commodities) where imitation is rife and for mature products where innovation can breathe new life into the product and extend

It is important to identify the consumer needs that will be targeted by improved or radically changed product features. For this purpose, analysts have differentiated between “core” product features and help provided in evaluating, buying and using the core product.

Apple’s innovation of the ipod rendered the Sony Walkman as obsolete. In order to ensure that it could serve the consumers for better utilization of its product, it setup the iTunes store where consumers could purchase soundtracks and podcasts. Apple also identified a potential consumer need and developed the iPad that took the market by storm. By anticipating the needs of the consumer before its competitors and coming up with innovative products to cater to those needs, Apple ensured that it strengthened its market position.

Process innovation

Process innovation embraces quality function deployment and business process reengineering

(Cumming, 1998). It provides the means for safeguarding and improving quality of products as well as saving costs. The cost reductions may be passed on to customers in the form of lower prices thereby adding value, or they may not be passed on thereby increasing the profit

Apart from the supply of the core product, another factor that forms an integral aspect of process innovation is the support system that is put in place for any offer. Services are reliant on personal interactions and require quality standards to be maintained in order to achieve results. This aspect of process innovation is particularly challenging.

Maruti Suzuki holds an edge over its competitors in the small car segment on account of the economies of scale that it has achieved in the manufacturing process. It is also renowned for its exemplary after sales service, with service centres setup across the country, providing uniform quality service thereby associating the brand with reliability and quality.

Market innovation

The primary objective of market innovation is to identify potential markets through segmentation and come up with the most efficient strategy to serve the target segments. Incomplete market segmentation results in a less than optimal mix of target markets, resulting in loss of market