Marketing Plan and Product Launch Overview - Smartphone Market

Product Launch Plan (Week 2)

Learning Team C

Milad Aghili, Ta’Cora Burgess, Maya Hajjar,

David Park, and Justin Yi

Marketing 571

January 4, 2016

Professor David Cicerone

 Product Launch Plan for iPhone 7

Marketing Plan and Product Launch Overview

“A marketing plan is a written document that summarizes what the marketer has learned about the marketplace and indicates how the firm plans to reach its marketing objectives” (Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller, 2006).  For this assignment, we will deliver a marketing plan different from Apple for launching the new iPhone 7 in the upcoming fall.  Our primary marketing strategy will be making iPhone more appealing with having attractive design and having battery life far superior to Apple’s rivals.  iPhone 7 will also have 500 GB internal storage with much bigger battery than iPhone 6.  In this paper, we will be covering the market needs and growth, SWOT analysis, competition, product offering and definition, product identification, our product choice justification, and 10-question survey for our final marketing plan collecting additional key data about the buyers.

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Market Needs and Potential Competition

When evaluating the market needs for the smartphone market, we will be putting our emphasis on consumer needs and competitor capability. While Apple products are known for superior quality with appealing design, iPhones are not perfect to consumers and needs of the market. According to Consumer Affairs and various iPhone consumer complaints and surveys (see survey questions used below), top complaints are difficulties of operating iPhone, battery life, and iOS operating systems issues.  These complaints were very similar across different demographics such as age, race, sex, and social class. The main competitors of iPhone 7 will be Samsung Galaxy who own majority of the market globally.  Galaxy S7 is reportedly to be in preparation for a launch in February 2016. The Galaxy S7 is rumored to have two sizes with four models, slight change in design, upgraded processors, and enhanced battery life. Based on consumer and competitor analysis, our market needs a smartphone that is easy to use with long battery life that will have more superior operating systems than the Galaxy series.

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Survey

1. What is your age?

2. What is your gender?

3. What is your personal income?

4. Where do you live?

5. What is your level of education?

6. What is your profession?

7. How often do you purchase an iPhone? Any areas iPhone needs improvements?

8. What is the primary use of your phone? Personal or business?

9. What is your typical budget for a new phone?

10. What is the most important thing to you on a personal mobile device?

Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) Analysis

It is important to start working on the SWOT analysis for either launching a new product or improving an existing product. “SWOT Analysis is done by the organization to identify the internal strength and weakness, as well as the external opportunities and threats” (Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller, 2006).