Article of the Week: Apples' Success

Apples’ success When consumer electronic company, Apple, began selling its product, it faced many challenges. Its biggest one was trying to compete with other electronics companies, mainly Microsoft. Up until the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 21st century all of Apple’s success had come from the Macintosh. After that they started investing in other products such as: the IPod, IPad and IPhone. And today much its success come from those products. “In 2011, Apple surpassed Google as the most valuable global brand at more than $153 billion” (Ferrell, 2). A company cannot reach this achievement simply by having a good product. So how did Apple accomplish this achievement? The answer is: Investing in their retail store and customer service. Since 2001, when Apple opened its first stores, they’ve been investing a lot in the aspect of their stores, so when a customer walks in they have complete access to their product. “The stores are like showrooms that allows customers to test products” (Ferrell, 2), meaning that customers can check for themselves what product fits their need and want. In addition to retail stores, Apple has also invested and changed the way its staff or employee attend to customers. If you walk into an electronic store, the employee always tries to get you to buy they’re latest and most expensive product, they don’t pay attention to your preferences, all they want to do is sell they’re product. At an Apple store “Rather than pushing products on consumers, Apple store employees are asked to listen and assist” (Ferrell, 3). Apple focuses more on finding and helping the customers find what they need, rather than just selling their products. This strategy and relationship between the Apples employee and its customer will benefit the company a lot because the customer will walk out of the store satisfied with the customer service and the fact they had the chance to test the product before they bought it. When a

Cited: Ferrell, O.C, Geoffrey Hirt and Linda Ferrell. “Apple Stores: The Future of Retail?” Business: A changing World. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2014.