The global Smartphone market is dominated by two major companies, Apple and Samsung. Both globally and within the New Zealand context both companies are using many tactics and strategies such as clever marketing campaigns, market segmentation and product value to win customers and gain a competitive advantage in the market. After analysing both companies and their marketing strategies this essay will make suggestions as to probable strategys for how Apple and Samsung can improve their operations and in turn increase their sales.
In general terms, market segmentation “involves dividing a market into smaller segments of buyers with distinct needs, characteristics or behaviours that might require separate marketing strategies or mixes.” (Kotler, Burton, Deans, Brown and Armstrong, 2013). For large companies like Apple and Samsung it is crucial that they know who their customers are and what they are looking for in a product.
Markets can be segmented in many ways, for example geographic, demographic and behavioural, the main market segmentations used by both Apple and Samsung are demographic and behavioural. Demographic segmentation focuses on things like age, gender, and income, the latter being the most important for companies when deciding how to price their product. Behavioural segmentation includes benefits sought by customers, loyalty status of the company, and attitudes towards the product, this can be created by the company through advertising.
Within the New Zealand context, Samsung has positioned themselves as a high- tech Smartphone provider, catering to a younger generation, with a considerable amount of technical ability, this is illustrated by their advertising campaign which shows people queuing outside a store for the launch of the new Iphone, a large proportion of the people queuing are of the baby boomer generation and those who aren’t watch people