美國essay：蘋果公司和索尼公司營銷策略對比分析

撇脂定價(jià)策略是電子行業(yè)市場領(lǐng)導(dǎo)者經(jīng)常使用的策略，像索尼、戴爾、蘋果、諾基亞等。如上面提到的像他們這樣的大公司，在開發(fā)和研究上會花費(fèi)巨大的成本甚至?xí)䥺拥妆�，要想迅速恢�?fù)沉沒成本，他們需要把產(chǎn)品定在高價(jià)位,獲得更多的利潤，盡管銷量比較低，但每種產(chǎn)品的銷售會獲得巨額利潤，這樣足以迅速賺回成本。電子產(chǎn)品的市場價(jià)格以驚人的速度下降了，，很多客戶都知道這個(gè)事實(shí)，但有些客戶在購買產(chǎn)品時(shí),賣家依然是以高價(jià)格推出，所以他們是第一個(gè)使用者。當(dāng)客戶的需求都被滿足時(shí)，公司會慢慢降低價(jià)格來吸引下一批對價(jià)格敏感的客戶。但是從客戶的角度來看這種營銷模式不會持續(xù)很長時(shí)間。

蘋果公司簡介—Briefing on Apple Inc

蘋果電腦公司涉及設(shè)計(jì)、制造、和銷售個(gè)人電腦這一過程的繁重任務(wù)，主要是Mac系列以及一些相關(guān)的軟件、提供各種產(chǎn)品服務(wù)、外圍設(shè)備和眾多的網(wǎng)絡(luò)解決方案。它還包括設(shè)計(jì)、開發(fā)和銷售包括各類型iPod在內(nèi)的便攜式數(shù)碼音樂播放器，及其相關(guān)配件和產(chǎn)品服務(wù)。蘋果公司還涉足網(wǎng)絡(luò)第三方音樂、有聲讀物、音樂視頻、短片和電視節(jié)目等業(yè)務(wù)中。蘋果公司借助其網(wǎng)上商店的零售商和直營店，在世界各地銷售其產(chǎn)品。第三方批發(fā)商和經(jīng)銷商對公司至關(guān)重要。蘋果公司也設(shè)計(jì)和生產(chǎn)自己的智能手機(jī)“iPhone”和音樂播放器。

Price skimming is a pricing strategy which was regularly followed in the electronics industry by the market leaders like Sony Corp, Dell, Apple Inc, Nokia etc. Like mentioned above big companies like them incurs huge costs in the form of R&D as well as start up costs, so to recover the sunken costs quickly, they need to price their product high to get a better profit margin, even though the unit sales will be low, the profit earned from every product sold is huge enough to cover up the cost quickly. Some customers are aware of the fact that the price of consumer electronic products are falling down at a dramatic rate, but some customers buy the product when its launched at the high price so that they are the first ones to use it. When demands from such customers are finished, the firm slowly lowers the price to attract next segment of customers that is the price sensitive buyers. But from customers point of view this movement is not seen favourably all the time.

蘋果公司簡介—Briefing on Apple Inc

Apple Computers Inc involves itself in the tedious task of designing, manufacturing, and marketing of personal computers, mainly the Mac Book series along with few related softwares, providing various services, peripherals, and numerous networking solutions. It also involves itself in designing, developing, and marketing of a line of portable digital music players which consists of different iPod models and its related accessories and services. It also looks after the online of distribution of third party music, audio books, music videos, short films, and television shows. Apple sells its products all through out the world through its online stores with a lot of help from its retail stores and its direct sales force. Its third-party wholesalers and resellers are of key importance to the company. Apple also manufactures and designs its own Smartphone ‘The iPhone’ which is both a cell phone and a music player. (Data Monitor 2008)

Apples management is primarily on a geographical basis, operating through five
main segments: the Americas, Europe, Japan, retail and others. The European Japanese and American segments do not have activities related to the retail segment. Both North and South America are a part of the American segment, while the European segment includes Middle East and Africa along with most European countries. The entire reportable geographic operating segment provides their customers with similar hardware and software products and the same services, the only difference being the language. (Data Monitor 2008)

Apple-owned retail stores are present in the US, UK, Japan and Canada, having
116 retail stores in the US, and eight international stores in the 3 other respective countries. Asia-Pacific, i.e. Australia and Asia except Japan is also taken care of. Apple’s subsidiary, FileMaker. FileMaker develops, publishes, and distributes deal with desktop-based database and its management application software for the well renowned Mac OS and the everlasting Windows-based systems (Data Monitor 2008)

iPhone 營銷策略—The iPhone Strategy

The Apple iPhone is a Smartphone developed and marketed by Apple Inc which functions as an internet enabled multimedia capable phone. It has features like camera, visual voice mail, a portable media player using the iPod’s interface. The phone runs on Apple’s OS X in Unix Kernel. It has a 3.5 inch touch screen through which all the functions are accessed. User can navigate through the iPhone’s user interface with your finger and you can also conjure up a keyboard when needed.

There are 4 generations of iPhone hardware, latest being the iPhone 4 which has two cameras for video calling and a higher resolution display. When the iPhone was launched in 2007 it was priced at $599 in the United Stats. Even though it was launched at a very high price, consumers were queuing up at the stores to get hands on it the first day. At later stage Apple skimmed its price from $599$ to $399. The main reasons which users bought the product on the first day was because they are technologically sophisticated are the buyers are usually early adopters of technology and various people who represents media companies who review the product on their channels and websites. And moreover most of the customers are previous users of Apple products. These customers are not price sensitive and they would spend any amount to get the product first. “Other reason why Apple was able to charge a high price was because the buyers are not attracted to pirated versions of the products because of the brand image linked to the Apple Family”(Koehler 1996). So Apple was very sure of selling enough iPhones that will allow them to get back all the sunken costs spent on R&D. This is the main reason why they decided to go for a skimming price strategy. Other strategy used by Apple was that when they launched a new generation of iPhone they always made sure that they priced it less than the launch price of previous generation. This in turn attracted customers to buy the new product thinking they are getting a better value for money.

索尼公司簡介—Briefing on Sony Corp

“Sony Electronics Corp based in Tokyo Japan is a market leader in audio , video , communications and information technology products for the consumer and professional markets” (Sony Corporate Fact Sheet 2010). It is well knows for influencing public on adoption of latest consumer technologies and electronics. Its television, music, computer entertainment, motion picture and online business makes it one of the best entertainment and technology companies in the world. Principal businesses which Sony operates under it are Sony Electronics Inc, Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc and Sony Music Entertainment. Sony recorded annual sales of $78 billion for the year ended March 31st 2010 and it also has workforce of 167,900 worldwide (Sony Corporate Fact Sheet 2010).

Sony is the co-developer of CD, DVD, Super Audio CD and Blu-ray Disc. It is also the developer, manufacturer and marketer of Playstation 2, Playstation Portable (PSP) and The Playstation 3. It is also the inventor, developer and owns worldwide popular brands such as the BRAVIA LCD TV, VAIO personal computers, Handycam Camcorder, Cyber Shot Digital Camera, Walkman digital music player and Memory stick flash media. The company has its shares listed in four major stock exchanges worldwide which includes New York, London, Tokyo and Osaka. (Sony Corporate Fact Sheet 2010).

PS3策略—The Playstation 3 Strategy

Playstation 3 also known as PS3 is the third home videogame console manufactured by Sony Corp after the success of Playstation 1 and Playstation 2. Playstation 3 competes with Microsoft XBOX 360 and Nintendo Wii which completes the iteration of current generation videogame consoles. PS3 stands out from its competitors in the form of multimedia capabilities because it is the only console which supports playback of Blu-Ray disc (Blu-Ray disc is the next generation successor to DVD). Playstation 3 was the first Blu-Ray 2.0 compliant Blu-Ray player in the market, it was also considered the true next generation graphical console because of the presence of HDMI( High definition media interface) port on it, which allowed transmission of high definition content to the HDTV unlike either of its competitors which dint have HDMI port at launch.

Playstation 3 was first launched in Japan on November 11th 2006 followed by North America and UK. Like how Sony used Price Skimming strategy for its Playstation 1 and Playstation 2, here also Sony made sure its console carried a high launch price starting with $599 for the 60 GB model and $499 for the 20 GB model. This price was very high compared to its competing consoles which were being sold at $349 for XBOX and $249 for the Wii. But Sony justified the price tag boasting PS3’s next generation capabilities because of the presence of Blu-Ray drive in it. Even though the price was sky high Sony was still loosing a mammoth amount of $241.35 on the 60GB and $306.85 on the 20 GB per console sold. This meant that it was actually loosing the amount equivalent or more to the retail price of a competing console every time a PS3 is sold. But Sony’s strategy soon emerged as a winner when Blu-Ray format was declared as the officially preferred next generation format by all the major film studios. This led many consumers to buy PS3 as a replacement for their DVD players as PS3 offers both Blu-Ray playback as well as High definition gaming. In July 2007, Sony skimmed $100 of both its models which doubled the demand and led to PS3 being sold out at top retailers. As years progressed with advances in technology at an all time high, the cost of Blu-Ray players and graphics chipset started falling down, which allowed Sony to cut their production cost and overlook mammoth loss suffered on every console sold. On September 1st 2009, Sony announced the launch of its slimmed down version of PS3 nicknamed PS3 Slim with another $100 skimmed of its retail price fixed at $300, which saw the sales of PS3 rising by 1000% compared to the same time in 2008. In May 2010, in an official Sony statement, it was announced that due to advance in electronics and manufacturing the cost of producing PS3 has achieved an all time low and for the first time Sony was earning profit for every console sold. Even though the launch price was very high and considered out of the world by many, Sony was able to achieve enough sales to build a big fan base for PS3 on which it stands firmly now with additional support from third party developers. Thus it can be concluded that Sony exactly like how it achieved success with price skimming on its previous generation consoles, has again achieved success with skimming strategy on PS3.

總結(jié)—Conclusion

Downfall of price is something which is totally unpredictable in electronics industry these days. This drastic fall of price is part of the pricing strategy adopted by the company but even though the price of the products is getting cheaper, it’s not seen as a favourable move by all the customers. Some of them feels price discriminated because they bought the same product at a higher price just a couple of days back. If this strategy goes on, there is high chance that customers who got skimmed might stop buying products from the same company in future. For the customers to return to the company they have to provide them some form of perk which its competitors doesn’t provide and in turn will provoke them to be a loyal customer to the company. As seen above, both Sony and Apple are using price skimming to achieve success on earning big profits on its new innovations in the market, even though the beginning wasn’t as green as they had hoped for. As seen with both of them the first ones to buy the new product regardless of the very high price were the buyers coming under the category of innovators and brand loyal customers. But as seen from the survey most of the electronic customers are buyers who come under the category of early majority who buys a product when its price comes down to somewhere below premium. So the electronic firms should start looking for some strategy will motivate early majority buyers to buy the product at Premium price. Price in general is something which is worshiped by both customers and firms, so the skimming decisions taken by the firm should be planned so well that it wins more customers rather than ending up loosing the existing ones.