Carnival Cruise Lines Sears Craftsman Tools Apple iPhones Lo

Carnival Cruise Lines
Sears Craftsman Tools
Apple iPhones
Lowe\'s Home Improvement Stores
The Salvation Army

Select two of these brands and for each: (a) indicate which one differentiation source you believe is most important to them currently and (b) indicate which other differentiation sources you believe might hold promise for development for them in the near future and why.

Solution

Apple iPhones:

(a) For Apple, the most important differentiation strategy is its unique product offering and trgeting a niche market. The company’s products have always been designed to be ahead of the curve compared to its peers.

(b) The other differentiation strategy that hold promise for them in near future could be to increase the ability to throw out new surprises in the market in terms of different changes in the product. With the, launch of 6S, Apple already took a step ahead in the new direction and entered into the most desired Phablet market.Most of the time these days, all pertinent details are leaked well in advance, and industry watchers already know what\'s coming. This time around, Apple had a few tricks up its sleeve and surprised all.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lowe\'s Home Improvement Stores

(a) Lowe\'s uses a focus strategy and they mainly focuses on women customers since its inception. They maintained their store design to be women friendly and as a result half of their customers today are women. Moreover, with time they keep changing themselves based on their customer\'s need and want. Therefore, Lowe uses a focused differentiation strategy based on responsiveness to customers.

(b) In recent times, Lowe changed its focus from \"single-channel strategy\" to \"omni-channel\" strategy i.e. apart from selling over physical stores, Lowe\'s now adopted technology and went online. This holds a huge promise for Lowe as most shopping experiences now a day is internet-centric and entering this market can increase the customer base for Lowe and increase the coversion rate of customers.