Apple Brand Research Paper

What is a Brand?

American Marketing Association (AMA) defines brand as a “name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers to differentiate them from those of competition” (Strategic Brand Management, P. 31). In this era of diversities, different brands compete with one another to be the most recognized in the market. They attempted to create the “wow” shopping experience that will make people come back for their brands. Wharton’s marketing professor by the name of Stephen Hoch once stated, “Peoples’ expectations are pretty high. It’s easy to fall short of those expectations, and hard to eclipse bad experiences, even with something that’s over-the-top.

Apple well understands that brand equity is fundamental for the success of a company. Apple has created a sense of ownership and pride among its users. Once people have shifted into Apple users, it is very likely for them to prefer Apple products rather than its competitors. Even though competitors like Samsung, Google, and Microsoft have continue to innovate new products with better specifications than that of Apple, many Apple customers are not easily

In my opinion, Apple has successfully gained and maintained both of these sources of brand equity. Brand awareness is made up of brand recognition and brand recall. “Brand recognition is consumers’ ability to confirm prior exposure to the brand when given the brand as a cue. Brand recall is consumers’ ability to retrieve the brand from memory when given the product category, the needs fulfilled by the category, or a purchase or usage situation as a cue” (Strategic Brand Management, P. 73). After co-founding Apple, Steve Jobs stated that, “The chance to make a memory is the essence of brand marketing.” Apple has done exactly that by making connection with customers through their products. There is an undeniably strong brand awareness to Apple. On the mention of the word smartphone, for example, one of the first brands to come to the mind of the majority of people will be the Apple iPhone. On the mention of the word music player, one of the first brands to come to the mind of the majority of people will be the Apple iPod. On the mention of the word tablet, again, one of the first brands to come to the mind of the majority of people will be the Apple iPad. These are proofs that Apple has successfully gained very strong brand