Apple has always targeted its products mainly at the retail consumers and it has brought about a transformation in the lives of individuals. Innovation can be seen in the marketing campaign of the company in which Apple promotes itself as a hip brand. As its initial target market segment had been the youth, it pushes the brand to be strongly identified with almost everything that is symbolic of youth, smartness and up-to-the-minute. To cite a case, Apple’s ‘I’m a Mac’ campaign can be considered in which the Mac guy has been projected as a smooth and confident individual and at the same time the PC appears to be old and uptight. Through its advertising campaign, it seeks to influence consumers to try out something new.
Apple has often been attacked for being an elite brand that creates superficial demand in the mindsets of the consumers. As its applications can be used on its devices only, the company, as claimed by the critics, leaves behind the under privileged to aspire for it (Alang, 2011). However, if the numbers are compared, it is seen that Apple’s Mac Operating system software has only a 5% market share and it is far behind Windows. Moreover, its iPhone also lags Blackberry and Android (Wagner, 2010).
Apple has capitalized on the desires of the consumers which are implicit in nature and accordingly deployed the practices of both knowledge management and innovation to tap the opportunity. When Apple introduced its computer, many consumers were not ready to purchase it as they perceived it to be pricey. However, Apple utilized this information and offered products like iPod and iPhone as these products had lower entry costs and were user friendly, wherein everything could be done at one touch and the user did not have to browse through fat manuals to learn how to use the product. Through the strategy of selling products that had lower entry costs, Apple created an opportunity in which new users were introduced to the brand ‘Apple’. As consumers started enjoying in using their gadgets, they would become attached to the brand which in turn would lead to creation of a loyal customer base.