Ch. 14 - Marketing Channels and Retailing

Since Apple Inc. is a well-known company, a lot of people wish to purchase one of its products. The first place where they can get such products is the Apple Retail Store, or Apple Online Store. It is understandable that an Apple Store can be crowded from time to time, and even though everyone is seen, people still complain for not being helped as soon as they walk in the doors. Now, Apple takes every customer seriously, and always provides the best customer service there is, but customer needs to understand tat visiting an Apple will never as quiet as they think it would be.

When a new product is released, it is obvious for the stores to not have the product with the specifications the customer is looking for. Certain people are not so patient when it comes to waiting for such product. In this particular case, some other stores might have gotten some, and the customer opt to visit those stores instead. These are not Apple Stores, these are companies that also focus on selling electronics. Two known companies that carry the same Apple products are BestBuy and Tekserve. These companies could be known as marketing channels since they buy products and facilitate the change of ownership between the manufacturer and consumers. Some of these companies like BestBuy, provides discounts to increase sales and traffic of customers. However, one thing ought to be acknowledged, the Apple Stores not only sells products, it also sells and provides services. These particular services allow the customers to get started with their new devices. Perhaps this benefits for customer helps Apple to be differentiated from BestBuy and/or Tekserve. If a customer purchases an Apple product at BestBuy, the employees will not help their customers get started or even solve the issues the costumer comes in with. Also, the benefit of buying an Apple product at Tekserve would be the variety of accessories the companies offers. Yet, apple.com offers more accessories than what the actual stores sometimes do.

BestBuy 

Tekserve

Apple