The 4 Market Position and an Example of a Product Essay Example

The 4 Market Position and an Example of a Product Paper Market Leader A market leader is a brand, product, or a firm that has the largest percentage of total sales in terms of revenue (the market share) of a market. A market leader often dominates all his competitors in areas such as: customer loyalty, distribution coverage, image, perceived value, price, profit, and promotional spending. To be the leader in the market, the company needs to be innovative, agile, revolutionary, obsessive and supportive. Market leader objectives are to continue expanding their total market by finding more new consumers to purchase their product, creating new uses for the current product which they are selling, and to encourage more usage among the current consumers. A market leader should always be equipped with a defense strategy that will help defend against any new threats that might threaten their position as a market leader. Also, another objective to achieve is to keep increase their market share of their product. An example of market leaders are: Coco-Cola (soft drinks), McDonald’s (fast food), Caterpillar (large construction equipment), Kodak (photographic film), Wal-Mart (retailing), and Boeing (aircraft). Market Challenger Market challengers are runner-up companies that aggressively attack competitors to get more market share. A market challenger’s strategic objective is to topple down the current market leader and to take over its place. A market challenger will always strive to attack the current market leader, or other firms that matches its own size, or smaller and local regional competitors in hope to be the leader in the product or service which they are offering. We will write a custom essay sample on The 4 Market Position and an Example of a Product specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on The 4 Market Position and an Example of a Product specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on The 4 Market Position and an Example of a Product specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer In essence the challenger has three strategic alternatives that are available to the company: (a) a direct or head-on attack using either cost/price/value for money as the key strategic variable; (b) an indirect or flanking approach using product differentiation or promotional activities as a way to win consumer’s preference and loyalty; and (c) a by-pass strategy based upon radical innovation through which the challenger seeks to change existing purchasing behavior in favor of a new solution to basic consumer needs. Such examples are like Adidas attempting to beat Nike or Burger King attempting to challenge McDonald’s position as the market leader. Market Follower Market follower are firms that attempt to use strategies to seek stable market shares and to gain profits by following competitors’ product offers, prices, and also marketing programs. Market followers attempt to create a similar to product that is innovative to be sold at a cheaper price comparing to the company who has that similar product. A market follower has many advantages also. A market follower can learn from the market leader’s experience and copy or improve on the leader’s product and programs, normally with much lesser investment compared with the market leader. One such example would be the recent new colors for the Sony’s Vaio Laptops. Once Sony releases their new color design, Dell later would follow in it and would have their personalized laptop colors which could be chosen when purchasing a laptop from Dell. Niche Market A niche market is often portrait as a focused, targetable portion of a market. By definition, then, a business that focuses on a niche market is addressing the need for a product or service that is not being addressed by the mainstream providers. Niche market can be thought as a narrowly defined group of potential customers. For instance, instead of offering cleaning services, a business might establish a niche market by specializing in blind cleaning services. Why should you bother to establish a niche market? Because of the great advantage of being alone there; other small businesses may not be aware of your particular niche market, and large businesses wont want to bother with it. The trick to capitalizing on a niche market is to find or develop a market niche that has customers who are accessible, that is growing fast enough, and that is not owned by one established vendor already. Niche market’s strategies are often targeted towards smaller markets that large companies won’t bother entering. To remain in business, niche marketers would need to create niches, then expand it and finally protecting them or copyright them. The only risk of a niche market is when a larger firm notices the niche market profit and attempt to enter the market with larger resources and capital. Apple iPod The product that I will talk about will be Apple’s iPod. First, I will list down what are the available products, and then I will discuss about their marketing strategy are they using and at now. The reason for choosing iPod, it is because of their current position in the market now and I have knowledge about it since I owned one. Apple’s iPod is one of the top products in the areas of portable media players. It has managed to stay at the top because of their unique software and design that keep consumers wanting it. Their uniqueness is in Apple’s iTunes software in which it is able to transfer music to the iPod devices. As a jukebox application, iTunes is able to store a music library on the users computer and which can either play, burn and rip music from a CD. It’s also to a lot of files like a PDA. Such files such as photos, videos, games, contact information, E-Mail messages, Web bookmarks, and calendars to iPod models that support those features. Apple focused its development on the iPods unique user interface and its user-friendly interface of use, rather than on technical capability. As of September 2007, the iPod had sold more than 110 million units worldwide making it the best-selling digital audio player series in history. Now lets talk about the iPod. Its doing really well. Theyre rather strong. Teehee. Weve sold over 110m to date and youll notice the place where the sales curve is strongest is during the holiday season today were going to refresh or replace EVERY single product in this lineup to get ready for this holiday season. Currently the iPod has a few selections in line. Currently are on sale, are the iPod shuffle, iPod nano, iPod classic and the brand new iPod touch. The iPod shuffle is a digital audio player that is designed and marketed by the company Apple Inc. The purpose for this model is to create a budget model for Apples iPod family. It was announced at the Macworld Conference Expo on January 11, 2005, using the tagline life is random. This model is a new design as instead of storing data on a hard disk, it has been changed to the first iPod to use a flash memory. The current second generation model weighs at only about 15 grams (or 0. 55 ounces). It was introduced in September 2006 along with the revamped fifth generation iPod classic and second generation iPod nano. Later in 2007, as a preparation for the Christmas holidays of 2007, Apple launched a new color which is red. Now currently, the iPod shuffle has nine colors which are: All nine colors of the second-generation iPod shuffle. The bottom rows are the original colors; the top rows are the refreshed colors. Silver units have been available throughout the life of the second-generation shuffle. The iPod nano is one the four portable media player that is designed and marketed by the company Apple Inc. The iPod nano is designed to be as a midrange model in for Apples iPod family. The first generation of this version was introduced in 2005. It also uses flash memory, just like the iPod shuffle. However, this comes with a miniaturized version of the display screen and has click wheel found on the iPod classic. The model has been updated twice since its introduction. This above version is the 3rd generation iPod nano. This nano was announced in a 4 GB version coming only in silver, and an 8 GB version coming in silver, turquoise, mint green, black and Product Red. Recently, Apple has launched the new pink color. The battery now lasts for approx. 24 hours on audio playback and approx. hours on video playback. Steve Job, Co-founder, CEO of Apple Inc. , showing off the new iPod Nano Its incredibly tiny, this is the new nano, and it’s incredibly thin. Its REALLY nice. Huge applause. Let me show you some bigger pictures of it comes in beautiful colors. So whats the video like? New nano: larger 2-inch screen, its going to look the same as it did on the iPod vi deo, its the same QVGA resolution. Weve achieved this with a screen with the highest pixel density weve ever shipped. The iPod classic is a portable media player that is marketed by the company Apple Inc. This model is the flagship model for Apples iPod family. To this date, there have been six generations of the iPod classic. There was also a spin-off called the iPod photo which was later then re-integrated into the main classic line. All the generations of the iPod classic uses a 1. 8-inch hard drive for storage. The word classic retronym was introduced with the introduction of the sixth-generation iPod classic on September 5, 2007. Prior to this, the iPod classics were simply just referred to as iPods. Steve Jobs, Co-founder, CEO of Apple Inc. showing off the new iPod Classic. A little video for everyone, thats what we set out to do with the new nano. We hope you love it as much as we do That brings us to the iPod. The iPod its got a its got a funny name. Its got a funny name. Its time to give it a name: were calling it the iPod Classic because its the original iPod. Ha! Side-by-side view of 6th and 5th generation iPods, respectively, showing interface differences The iPod touch i s both a portable media player and a Wi-Fi mobile platform designed and marketed by the company Apple Inc. The product was officially launched on September 5, 2007 through an event called The Beat Goes On. The iPod touch adds the graphical user interfaces Cover Flow and Multi-Touch to the iPod line and is now available at 8, 16 or 32 GB of flash memory. It also includes Apples Safari web browser and it is the first iPod enabling wireless access to the iTunes Store. Beginning of June 2008, the iPod touch will also have now access to the App Store. The App Store is an upcoming application for the iPhone and iPod touch that is created by Apple Inc. This allows users to browse and purchase applications that were developed for the iPhone SDK The iPod touch has the same multi-0touch interface the iPhone has. Adding new to it is a physical home button off the touch screen. The home screen has a list of buttons for the available applications. All iPod touch models have included with this standard applications: Music, Videos, and Photos (which is collectively duplicating the standard functions of the iPod Classic), iTunes (which providing access to the iTunes Music Store), Safari, YouTube, Calendar, Contacts, Clock, Calculator, and Settings. Later models have been added with Mail (allows to access POP/IMAP/SMTP e-mail), Maps, Stocks, Notes, and Weather, which could also be added to the earlier models with the purchase of a software upgrade. Direct links to web sites can be added to the home screen by the user. Steve Jobs, Co-founder, CEO of Apple Inc. , demonstrating the iPod Touch Let me go ahead and show you the new iPod touch. Again, slide to unlock. Here we are lets go into music. The icons look really strange and sparse on that huge screen. Its freaking us out! Apple’s iPod sales have been increasing over the steady flow of years. Since October 2004, the iPod has been dominating United States digital music player sales. Apple has manage to gain over 90% of the market for hard drive-based players and over 70% of the market for all types of players. During the year, from January 2004 to January 2005, the high rate of sales of Apple iPod caused the U. S. market share to increase from 31% to 65% and in July 2005, this market share was measured at 74%. In January of 2007 the iPod market share finally reached 72. 7% according to Bloomberg Online. With such sales, it is obvious that Apple’s iPod has become a market leader in portable music players in the United States. If Apple iPod wants to remain as market leader, they would have to continue maintaining their pleasing customers with quick response to any troubleshooting problems, making sure that their products have no problem in a product and even after launch, making sure that the products are quickly dealt with. Apple’s iPods are considered a product innovative. This is because so far no one has managed to fully copy the iPods functions. What makes it such a special product? It is because of their software system. Apple’s software is one of the hardest software to be able to modify. Also Apple has created their own jukebox application where users are able to sync songs, photos and videos unto their iPods. This application is the only way an iPod can receive it songs. Thus by doing that, Apple has managed to not only create own portable media players but also a specialized digital media player application for their iPods only. As Apple is not the first of creator of portable media devices, they have rose up to be the first in the United States because of a visionary leader; Steven Jobs. Apple iPods are called consumer products. Consumer products are products or services that are brought by final consumers for personal consumption. Marketers usually classify these products and services further basing on how consumers go about in buying them. What makes iPods so widely acceptable? It is because of their design and style of the product. This is called Product Style and Design where the style can be eye-catching to a consumer and the design is more of a skin deep concept where this is the very heart of the product. Apple has also decided to co-branding with Nike. Co-branding is the practice of using the established brand names of two different companies on the same product. Co-branding has many advantages. When the two products combine, they create a broader consumer appeal and also greater brand equity. In conclusion of this, Apple has managed to become the market leader in portable media players through various ways. Ways such as being a product innovative, having a visionary leader like Steven Jobs and co-branding with brands such as Nike.