Ch. 2 - Strategic Planning for Competitive Advantage

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, has been an integral part of the company's strategic planning. His, and the company's, marketing plan has been to set themselves apart from other similar products as superior and "cooler." Apple has gained competitive advantage by setting themselves apart from the rest. Theirs is a product competitive advantage.

This can be clearly seen in their "Why You'll Love a Mac" campaign. 

Make the ultimate upgrade. To a Mac.

Why get a new PC and just upgrade your computer, when you can get a Mac and upgrade your entire computer experience?

They go into great detail to describe why the Mac is a superior and unique product, and also better than the competition. They describe how they have better hardware, better software, better operating system, better support, and emphasize the compatibility of their products and how Macs can run Windows and Windows applications.

Apple campaigns have worked great to set them apart. People have come to trust their products and think of them as better for their unique, user friendly, intuitive user experience from products such as the iphone and the ipad. Apple has always done a great job with not only setting themselves apart as a superior product, but also as a "cooler" product as well. The most recent "Get a Mac" and "ipod People Silhouettes," which I will discuss further in later posts are great examples of this.