A Study of Apple Inc. (Thesis Sample)

The Impact of Mobile Marketing on Brand Image and Consumer Purchasing Behavior: A Study of Apple Inc.
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1 Introduction
1 Research Background
Mobile marketing is emerging as an important channel for marketing communication channel that is drawing huge attention from both consumers and marketers. The mobile phones have become an important marketing platform as it provides opportunity to marketers because of its connectivity with other devices. The International Telecommunications Union surveyed that mobile phone stand 6 billion across the world in which 1 billion are smart phones and remaining are feature phones (Masika, 2013). There are several marketing communication mediums in mobile phones including mobile messaging, search, video and display. However, mobile messaging has drawn significant attention from the marketers for marketing and promoting products. The main channel used in mobile messaging is Short Message Service (SMS); this application allows the users to send text messages of 160 characters. This application is commonly known as texting which has become the most popular app till date (Salo et al., 2008).
Metric (2009) conducted a survey and found that the percentage of mobile users receiving promotional SMS reached to 100% in 2007. This percentage of SMS receivers was supported by the survey of International Telecommunication Union that sent text messages have reached to 6.1 trillion and around 600,000 messages are sent per second. It is because of the penetration of mobile phones (Masika, 2013). However, the effectiveness of mobile marketing is unclear because of the fact that advertisers use this push marketing strategy because of convenience without considering the consumer consent. The marketers are investigating the potential of mobile marketing in both non-permission and permission scenarios.
This research is based on knowing the brand value affected by mobile marketing as branding or creating brand differentiation is important for businesses to maintain and sustain their competitive advantage in the market. There are many constructs of branding that have been studied by scholars relating to brand equity, brand personality, brand community, brand association, and brand trust (Thomson et al., 2005; Aggarwal, 2004). These authors suggested that people are making relationship with the brand, the way they are making relationships with other people in social context. Because of the perfectly competitive market, brand personality is differentiating and attaining an edge over competitors and positioning as strong brand in the mind of consumers which would not have been possible if branding has not been implemented effectively.
Attributes of product are functional but brand personality is a symbolic expression that influences the preference of consumers and builds emotional knot between brand and consumer through trust and attachment. Marketers are adapting technological advancements and innovative ways to communicate with customers. The notion of one-to-one marketing has shifted the curve from mass marketing. The focus is now towards an interactive, personalized and immediate way in which customers are communicated individually. This influence of personalized marketing is shaping the marketing strategies of companies and offering them new marketing channels. Ion In this modern age of technology, people use user-friendly products that are easy to use anytime anywhere. Similarly, wireless mobile communication technology is on the rise as this technology allows the easy communication anytime anywhere. This gives an opportunity to reach to consumers in shortest possible time in an interactive and personalized way (Heinonen and Strandvik, 2003). The mobile marketing campaigns make a relationship with the customers and develop a desire in them and urge them to buy products after receiving a short message. This marketing tactic influences the buying decision of consumers as marketers use push marketing strategy in form of texts messages sent to customers. This study focuses on the use of mobile marketing and its relationship with brand value which is shaped by the purchasing decision of consumers.
2 Organization Background
Apple Inc. is an American multinational company that was established in 1976 located in California. It produces and sells hardware and software and other consumer electronics. It started selling personal computers and released Macintosh computer in1984. It announced iPod in 2001. It is a portable music player which was a successful product. It continued releasing innovative and revolutionary products. Some of its successful line of innovative products includes iTunes in 2003, iPhone in 2007 and iPad in 2010. It is currently operating in eight segments consisting: desktop, iPad, iPhone, iPod, portables, software, hardware and other music products. The most recognizable products of Apple today are iPhone, iPod, iPad, desktop and notebook (Schwartz, 2012).
The iPhone released in 2007 has gone under 8 iterations and the latest iPhone is iPhone6. It is major revenue driver for Apple generating more the 50% of revenue in 2012. iPad was released in 2010 and has gone 5 iterations. The revenue from this segment was 21% of the total revenue in 2012. The Mac segment is made by desktops and portables. Desktop consist Mac Pro, Mac Mini and iMac and portables consist MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. It generated 15% revenue of the total revenue in 2012. The iPod is a music player introduced in 2001 consisting product line of iPod touch, iPod Nano, iPod shuffle and iPod classic. It generated 4% revenue of the total revenue in 2012 (Schwartz, 2012).
3 Rationale for Chosen Topic
The growth of mobile advertising has opened a new area of research. Consumers exploit the brand image to maintain their identity. The pivotal role of mobile media in accelerating the brand image and product development has been widely recognized. Little researches have been carried out to know the value of branding image and its influence on consumers’ behavior and decision making process. The present study aimed to establish the brand image and consumer relationships.
1.4 Problem Statement
Mobile marketing is providing advertisers an ability of enhancing customer exposure to a brand and increasing the customer awareness by giving value to customers in a personalized manner. SMS marketing is a push marketing strategy that assures high customer exposure as messages directly reach to customers creating a strong brand connection. After the messages are reached to customers, they are stored in the Inbox and customers can read those messages again at their convenience. As messages do not have a subject line so people will surely open these messages again before deleting them, assuring twice to thrice customer exposure. Mobile marketing is the viral effect also despite of creating brand awareness only. Doyle (2001) stated that forwarding messages is a common practice as it is easy and cheap.
Business Intelligence quoted that customers spend around 10% of their media time on mobile devices whereas only 1% of total advertisement spending is spent on mobile marketing in United States. People spend 43% of time on television whereas 42% of the advertisement spending is on this medium. Consumers spend 15% of their time on radio whereas marketing expenditure is 11% on ads. Consumers spend 7% of their time on newspapers and total spend on ads is 25% (Masika, 2013). These statistics show that there is a huge difference in the amount spent on mobile marketing medium and time spent by consumers on mobile phones. It shows a gap that can be tapped by marketers for investing sufficient resources to build brand recognition and brand value.
There is a limited understanding of the influence of mobile marketing on brand value and customer decision making regardless of growing literature in this context. Many researchers have worked on the attitude of customers towards mobile marketing and their adoption of mobile services (Kim and Kim, 2004). Other researchers conducted on the relationship between SMS advertising and branding did not produce conclusive results and strong theoretical background. To fill this gap and overcoming this backdrop, this study explores the impact of mobile marketing on the brand value and consumer buying behavior. This research examines that how SMS advertising medium is increasing brand value of Apple Inc.
1 Purpose of Study
This study can add additional knowledge to the marketers that how mobile marketing is influencing brand image. It gives an exponential growth and builds the confidence of marketers to practice mobile marketing. This study can propel the mobile industry to formulate effective marketing strategies and pushing academic institutions to add this context in the marketing communications syllabus. Scholars, practitioners and other researchers may identify further research areas. It can be used as a source of reference for future studies. This study can also be used to build further relationship of mobile marketing with different marketing dimensions. Findings can be useful to government for formulating policies regarding the use of mobile devices and mobile advertisement.
2 Research Questions
This study entails following research questions:
* How marketers are using mobile marketing to reach to the target market for enhancing brand image?
* How consumer buying behavior is affected by SMS advertising?
3 Research Objectives
Following are the research objectives designed for this study:
* To identify the relationship between mobile marketing and brand image
* To determine the impact of mobile marketing on the consumer buying behavior
* To examine the value and image of brand perceived by customers through mobile marketing and its influence on their behavior patter...