Reply to 2 Discussion Board Post 450 words per post !!!

Apple is a very well-known company who competes in various industries. Some of the industries/markets in which they compete are electronic equipment, personal computer, mobile phones, mobile payment systems, and media/entertainment. This paper will focus on the mobile payments portion of their business. According to the Business Insider Apple is dominating the industry. This is a great accomplishment, but the issue that Apple needs to consider is that “74% of mobile wallet nonusers wouldn’t want to engage in mobile payment activity even if all barriers were lifted” (Intelligence, 2016). However, the active users of Apple Pay monthly measured an increase of 450% year over year in June 2016. Business Insider reported in July of 2016 that 3 out of 4 transactions in the United States that were contactless were processed via Apple Pay.

The challenge is that there is still an untapped market who are not using this service. It is important to look at what business strategies could be utilized in order to reach this population. “In business terms, how successful once becomes ultimately lies in the formation and execution of a well-defined competitive strategy” (Hicks, 2010, p. 2). Benchmarking would be a helpful contemporary management technique /process for Apple to employ. Apple could utilize this process to identify its critical success factors, study the best practices of other businesses, the improvements of processes to the firm could then be implemented to help match or beat any competitors (Blocher, Stout, Juras, & Cokins, 2016).

Although Apple is the leader in this industry there is always something to be learned from our competitors. No corporation has all of the answers when it comes to processes and marketing. Perhaps one of the competitors is doing things more efficiently when comes to costs or ease of use. By utilizing benchmarking Apple will be able to analyze these areas and improve in areas where they are weak. By constantly improving they can continue to maintain and even improve their market share in this industry.

References

Blocher, E., Stout, D., Juras, P., & Cokins, G. (2016). Cost management: a strategic emphasis. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Hicks, M. (2010). Accounting for decision making: A study guide. Raleigh, NC: Synergistics Inc.

Intelligence, B. (2016, July 28). Apple Pay is dominating the mobile payments industry. Retrieved January 21, 2017, from http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-pay-is-dominating-the-mobile-payments-industry-2016-7