Custom «Segmentation and Target Market» Essay Paper Sample

Introduction

Apple Company is an American multinational company with its headquarters in Cupertino, California.  The company develops sells and online services, designs consumer electronics, software for computers, and manufactures personal computers.

Market Segmentation

Apple Company targets mainly the computer software and hardware market. Over the current years, this market has significantly grown as more people embrace technology. Computers are taking place in shaping the society in different ways. Computer software and hardware enable people socialize through social media, do office work, engage in telecommunication, and manage their personal data and files.

This segment of the market provides the Apple Company with a constantly growing chance of getting revenue. The number of customers globally keeps increasing with time. However, this segment of a market receives stiff competition. By dividing the hardware and software segments into two sub-segments, the hardware and software sub-segments, people can understand the competition in detail. Apple Inc receives competition in the software segment from the Microsoft Co-operation, and the Android Company offers the company competition in the software market segment. More specifically, Android has come up competitively in offering stiff competition in the phone software market. Many of the current smart phones use android platform, hence offering competition to the Apple’s IOS. Despite this process, Apple Inc has dealt with the competition by constantly improving on their phone and tablet operating system (Boote, , 2001). The company also offers only this operating system to its hardware including the iPods, iPads and the iPhones. This strategy works in promoting the hardware section of the company, hence keep it competitive in the industry.

The other subsection the company faces stiff competition in the industry is the computer hardware section. Many companies globally have invested and entered the computer hardware industry. Companies, such as the Samsung Company, produce computer hardware that poses strong competition for the Apple Inc in this segment. Other companies include HP, LG, Toshiba, and Lenovo. Flooding of the market with cheaper and easily accessible computer hardware reduce the market for the Apple’s products in this industry. The proper advertisement and the improved quality of products have enabled the company to shed off most of the competition in this segment of market. However, many of the other companies have improved their hardware quality, hence offering competition to the Apple Company’s products over time.  Specifically, the Samsung Company threatens to overthrow the Apple Inc as the customer’s favorite one in this market segment (Wedel, 2000).

Section of the Target Market

Apple Inc ventured in the computer and software industry since its setting up. Over the years, the company has managed to become diverse in many ways, hence making it invest in other markets in the industry, such as the recent acquisition of Headphone Company, beats. The company selected the hardware and software market as a target after considering the fact that technology is constantly spreading among the population. More people are becoming well vast with technology over time, consequently embracing every bit of it (Hung, & Tsai,  2008). Computers control most of the human activities in the current century. This factor increases the market and, thus, with the right marketing strategy, the company successfully took advantage of the market and was well-established in it.

Demographic Segmentation

Demographic segmentation entails dividing the market into groups depending on their age, sex, amount of income and ethnicity. Apple Inc divided the market according to the amount of income as it develops both high quality and expensive hardware, as well as lower quality and cheap hardware; it is, therefore, upon customers to make a choice on which of the products to purchase depending on their income. The company develops software designed for the use by people of different age. An example is the age restriction placed on various multimedia and applications supplied by the company barring people of a certain age from accessing the materials (Kotler, & Armstrong,  2013). Pregnancy management applications found on the operating system platform are an example of sex division of the market.  Majority of the company’s distribution focuses on a specific group of people in the market.

Behavioral Segmentation

The market segment for computer software and hardware has customers with varied behavioral characteristics.  It has made the company divide the market into different segments. Apple Inc develops music hardware and software specifically targeting the music customers. The company ventured in and developed the iTunes platform to enable purchase, listening, watching, and sharing of multimedia products including music.  The company then developed the iPod hardware for portable music that enables the customer to carry around and listen to the large amount of music of their preference. More recently, the company acquired the Head Phone beats and started distributing them. The company also divided the market into a telecommunication segment of which it supplies telephones. It also segmented the industry to  computer services. These services include both software and hardware. The development, manufacture and supply of the Mac OS and the Mac book has been around for a while.

Psychographic Segment

This phenomenon entails dividing the market according to segments containing the preferences of the people depending on their lifestyles. The computer software and hardware market contains customers with diverse lifestyles and cultures. Regulation of the supply of goods and services is, therefore, restricted by the lifestyle of the people concerned. Depending on the location, the Apple Inc tries to create software that helps the people deal with their normal lives as usual and improve it. The company develops software that enables people check their weight by controlling their eating habits. Through enabling the people monitor their eating habits, the software enables the customers select the perfect ways to live. The company sells the software specifically targeting the people in the society wanting to maintain and put their weight in check. Apart from this, the company has also ventured in work out software, as well as monetary management software. Diverse culture and lifestyle constantly fade off with time considering the fact that the internet is making the world a global village.