Apple Corporation: Ethical and Social Responsibility Essay

Apple Inc. is an American corporation that is located headquartered in in Cupertino, California that designs, develops, and sells electronics like computer software, online services, and personal computers. It’s very well known for hardware products like the Mac computers, iPods, iPhone and the iPad. Its online services include iCloud, iTunes Store and App Store. Its software includes the OS X and iOS operating systems the iTunes media browser and the Safari web browser. Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne on April 1, 1976 to develop and sell personal computers for people to use. It was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. on January 3, 1977, and was renamed as Apple Inc. on January 9, 2007. Apple is the world’s second-largest information technology company by revenue after Samsung Electronics and the world’s third-largest mobile phone maker after Samsung and Nokia (Cantrell, 2006). Fortune magazine named Apple the most admired company in the United States in 2008, and in the world from 2008 to 2012. On September 30, 2013, Apple surpassed Coca-Cola to become the world’s most valuable company. As of June 2014 Apple425 retail stores in fourteen different countries. As well as the online Apple Store and iTunes Store which is the world’s largest music retailer. Apple is the largest publicly traded corporation in, with a market profit of $446 billion by January, 2014. As of September 29, 2012, the company had 72,800 permanent full-time employees and 3,300 temporary full-time employees worldwide. Its worldwide annual revenue in 2013 is $170 billion. Apple’s brand loyalty is different than any other product. People love Apple products because they are a long lasting product that is going to last forever. At one time, Apple was actively engaged by the company, but this was after the phenomenon was already firmly established. Apple supports the continuing existence of a network usage. Mac users previously meet at the European Apple Expo and the San Francisco Macworld Conference & Expo trade shows, where Apple normally  introduces new products each year, to both the industry and public. Apple Store openings can draw crowds of thousands, with some waiting in line as much as a day before the opening or flying in from other countries for the event. The New York City Fifth Avenue â€Å"Cube† store had a line as long as half a mile. Apple is one of several highly successful companies founded in the 1970s that the traditional notions of what a corporate company should look like in organizations (Fisher, 2008). Apple was a game changer when they were started, no one ever thought they would be as successful as they were. Other successful companies with similar aspects from the same time frame include Southwest Airlines and Microsoft. As the company has grown and been led by a series of chief executives, each with his own idea of what Apple should be, some of its original character has arguably been lost. And that’s something you can’t change, different leaders of any company are going to have different ideas that they are going to bring to the table tha t can be good and bad sometimes. Apple still has a reputation for having individuality and excellence that reliably that has talented people into its company. This is great in that it gives employees to voice their opinion about the way things should be going and suggest any ideas for improvements (Stuart, 2013). To recognize the best employees, Apple created the Apple Fellows program, awarding individuals who made extraordinary technical or leadership contributions to personal computing while at the company. I love this about apple this shows that they really appreciate their employees. When a company show they love their employees the employees will tend to work harder. Apple is also known for strictly enforcing accountability. Each project has a directly responsible individual. This means that if something was to go wrong they would know the person that they would need to go to directly. Apple has a great social and ethical responsibility within their company. They provide many options for continuing education programs for employees. Apple Inc. is one of the most valuable companies around the world. This is incredibly profitable corporation but socially responsible one. It has proved to be the good companies and have done a good job with social and ethical responsibilities by continuously focus on violating the child labor, toxic conditions and other conditions of their code of ethics. The company focuses on good working conditions, adoption of environmental friendly manufacturing  process. The company also supports Product Red Campaign by contributing its revenue to fight against malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS (Wozniak, 2007). The company operates in full compliance of rules, regulations and laws of the country in which it is operating. Following are many examples which can prove that the company has met all its responsibilities. The company has stopped the use of underage labor in 10 manufacturing places in China including Foxconn. The company has eliminated bribery in one and dangerous working conditions in two facilities thus adhering to its policies and procedures in a se nse. The company has well laid down policy for hiring, training and workers safety and it makes sure that the policy is completely followed by the suppliers if they want to establish the business relations with the company. In the year 2010, the company has terminated its business with three suppliers, where management was not able to show its commitment to the supplier’s policies of Apple. Some of the methods Apple can utilize to ensure that the suppliers adhere to wage and benefit standards are as follows. The company can undergo compliance monitoring program announced and unannounced at the supplier end. Meaning they can come in at any time to make sure the company is complying with apples rules. It may include factory audits, cross checking the reports, corrective action plans and verification measures for ensuring the compliance of the code of conduct. The supplier needs to uphold the rights of the workers and has to establish the discrimination free work place. There are a lot of companies where workplace discrimination happens and people don’t know about. This is great that apple keeps tabs on the suppliers to make sure they are adhering to the rules. The suppliers are not expected to harm workers verbally or orally and they need to be treated with respect and dignity. I feel that Apple doesn’t need to do anything else that have met the responsibility to make sure that apple employees are being treated fairly. According to apples publications and responsibilities there have been few violations from the supplier companies. Based on my research the violation that they have had they were able to catch early on, before they get outta hand. Not saying that apple is perfect they have had some violation but they are able to catch them before it’s too late. Apple employs about 36,000 full-time people at its more than 350 retail stores around the globe. About two thirds of the stores are in the U.S. Apple Store workers are typically  paid about $9 to $15 an hour at the sales level, and up to about $30 an hour at its Genius tech support teams. Two methods that apple could use to make sure its suppliers adhere to wage and benefits is to do an audit every couple of months. This would ensure that all of the employees are getting paid what they are supposed to be paid. During this audit they will be able to catch any mistakes in pay that are going on. Another tool that they could use to insure that wages are being paid correctly, is to keep an open relationship with the employees. Telling the employees to let apple know if anything is going wrong, so they can correct is immediately. I do believe that apple customers would be willing to pay more, apple is a great product that they stand behind. It has long lasting quality. If apple had to increase the price point to give employees a raise consumers would be willing to do that. If it wasn’t for the workers there would be no ap ple products. I definitely think they should raise the price on iPhones and iPads they are the major two products that apple sells. People will pay any price for those two items because they are the most widely used. Apple uses a 3 point marketing philosophy thirty-five years after they adopted this it still works for today. This philosophy remains at the core of what makes Apple so effective at creating and profiting from loyal customers. Apple’s original three points Empathy: We will truly understand their [customer] needs better than any other company. Focus In order to do a good job of the things we decide to do, we must eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities. Impute People DO judge a book by its cover. We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software, etc if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities. Apple has used these principles to become the world’s most valuable company measured by market capitalization and one of world’s most valuable brands. Here are ten strategies Apple has used to become one of the world’s greatest marketers (Weyhrich, 2002). I think one thing that apple could do to help improve their marketing strategy would be to improve their products with the features that people like. As an iPhone user myself I would love to see a larger screen. If apple would use a larger screen it would make the phones more completive with some of the Android phones. I also think apple should lower the price point on their  higher end electronics like the iPad and mac book, people really love those items but many people can’t afford those items. Apple also uses a good marketing tool call The Exclusivity Technique is typically executed with relative success by businesses giving a select subset of customers a special deal on goods or services. For examp le some companies make certain offers exclusively available to existing customers or Facebook fans. This is the Exclusivity Technique at its most basic form. The exclusivity technique works by making the eligible subset of customers feel special. This creates a better customer business relationship and is proven to increase brand loyalty. Apple have taken this technique and put their own spin on it to develop what has been one of the most successful, and probably low-cost marketing techniques of all time .Instead of making a special offer exclusive, Apple made their entire iPhone product range exclusive. The cherry on top for Apple is that they orchestrated the Exclusivity Technique to make their mobile phone the world most popular, despite it supposedly being exclusive. This is a great technique in that customers love to feel special, by apple making them feel special that makes customers really want to keep using their products. I know me as a customer I love to feel special when I’m buying a product from a business and they make me feel special. I would be more willing to buy products from that company more often. Reference Page Cantrell, Amanda. Apple’s remarkable comeback story, CNN, March 29, 2006. Retrieved March 2, 2007. Fisher, Anne (March 17, 2008). â€Å"America’s Most Admired Companies†.Fortune 157 (5): 65–67. Stuart Elliot (September 29, 2013). â€Å"Apple Passes Coca-Cola as Most Valuable Brand†. The New York Times. Retrieved October 21, 2013. Wozniak, Stephen. â€Å"Homebrew and How the Apple Came to Be†, Digital Deli. Retrieved March 2, 2007. Steven Weyhrich (April 21, 2002). â€Å"Apple II History Chapter 4†. Retrieved August 18, 2008.