Forming a positive perception on consumers for the products you are launching in the market, is what a good marketing campaign should be all about. But this is no easy task to achieve. In fact, you have to consider the variance in background among different consumer communities. A marketing manager has to take into consideration various factors when constructing his marketing plan, from the psychological background to the socio-cultural features of that particular consumer group (Hollensen, 2007).
This is why the companies need to develop complex marketing strategies that will target specific customer groups which they intend to transform into their customers. This is done through the process of value creation. This is precisely what they have been doing at Apple, Inc. Their latest product release, the iPad, was developed with the specifications of various customer groups in mind. At Apple they understood that customer wanted a product that embeds all the features of a laptop, an iPod, an eBook reader, etc. That is why they brought all the possible multimedia features into one single product, the iPad. Nevertheless, when marketing in Australia they should base their strategy on different principles than in the US. Especially they should pay attention to their value positioning on the marketing process before product and services development (Kotler & Keller, 2006).
We are talking about a customer target group with different characteristics than the US counterpart. Australians tend to favor certain features and Americans others. In the US the market segmentation process made Apple to focus mostly on customer who wanted a product that focused on email and internet surfing, music videos and DVD playing.
The categories of people mostly targeted by the iPad were the actual ‘followers’ of the iPod, iPhone or iMac. We are talking about youth with a general liberal attitude of life and of business people who required an easy to use and light sort of tablet PC on which they can also use different features. Meanwhile they will have to base their branding strategy and the subsequent advertising campaign on different viewpoints in Australia. This society tends to be more sort of conservative when coming to family values and the youth groups tend not to have such a laissez faire attitude. Thus, running a campaign based on individualism, societal anti-conformism style, etc. could result inadequate in Australia. They should base their product launch and advertising campaign in focusing features of the iPad like the family photo storing, the iBook reading features, the easiness of jotting down notes and writing to a friend or family an email through its huge screen.
References
- Hollensen, S. (2007). Global marketing: A decision oriented approach (4th edition). New York: Prentice-Hall.
- Kotler, P., & Keller, K. (2006). Marketing Management (12th edition). New York: Prentice-Hall.