Course code: DM5502
Student name: Jingting Li
Student No.:1208900
Part 1: This article will give a critical comparison of two brands of mobile phone Apple and HTC, which are in the same industry of electronic technology. The reason to choose these two brands is that both of them have distinctive branding strategies but they have got different positioning. This article will discuss the industry of smartphones from these two brands. Both of them benefit from its high brand core value Primarily Apple store is like a church which doesn’t sell the products, but believes. That is what Apple’s brand image is. HTC presents a high quality of Android device as the most senior smartphones amongst the electronic technology. However HTC has started to fill the gap from IPhone and has become the substitute commodity of IPhone. As a top contender of Apple, HTC is taking the high-end road rather than competing on cost. (Allen, T.) That has become a potential threaten of IPhone.
Part 2: Both Apple and HTC have achieved a big success owning to more attention of customers experience. Therefore a successful brand company should build the high customers-based brand equity. According to Keller (1993), brand equity consists of the four dimensions of brand awareness, band images, and perceived quality. That is to say brand equity is an indication of how a brand influences consumer appeal. Furthermore, its essence is the enterprise with the reflection that the consumer relates, the consumers’ loyalty and reliable to the brand, and it exists in customers’ mind. Therefore, strong brand equity means that customers have high brand-name awareness, maintain a favorable brand image, perceive that the brand is of high quality, and are loyalty of it (Keller, 1993). Brand equity as an invisible property has a deep impact on these two brands. This article is aim to compare the two brand’s brand equity to show how their level of brand awareness and attractive images whilst the way of improving their brand equity to gain brand core value as well as business value.
Part 3: The CEO of HTC implicated a high-end strategy to change their hardware figuration whilst treating design as the most sell points to improve its perceived quality. Secondly, due to improving their brand knowledge, they implemented a way of in-depth cooperation with telecom operator to become the most intrepid opponent of IPhone. Customers have a high brand knowledge and quality perceptions of IPhone. Apart from that, IPhone improved its brand ranking to 20th position in 2009(Jeffrey, L) .Apple company now could enable the company to sustain pricing that is at a premium to its contenders (Allen, T. ) This is how they built their other brand assets.
Here is a survey (Figure1) (Kapferer, J) from the two companies of based on brand equity. [pic]
Figure1: Comparison of IPhone and HTC by Brand Equity
Firstly it indicates that there are 80% people could recognize IPhone correctly in any different conditions and generate the brand from the memory. Secondly, HTC has more position of brand associations than IPhone (respectively 57% and 42%). That’s results in a promise of keeping the innovation and designs to satisfy customers’ need by HTC Company. On the other hand IPhone lose this part .For instance, the Iphone5 which came to the market a few months ago doesn’t show a big innovation of technologic of visual performance to the costumers. Thirdly, it presents that IPhone has an almost the same high loyalty with customers (respectively 31% and 30%), and there are 38.3% of people will choose IPhone as a priority. Additionally, there are only 10% people would consider changing their HTC it they have got a better chance. There is an issue for both IPhone and HTC, there are almost a half of the customers that are not interesting in smartphones and both of them haven’t got any plan for this part of users. That is also a