Question

Has the Apple company been through some international M&As? Has it faced any challenges in this respect?Does Apple company have made some cross cultural marketing/business blunders, If yes what was it about and how it could have been avoided?

Answer 1

Apple is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. It is considered to be one of the big four technology companies: Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. It was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in April 1976. It is the world's larget technology comapny by revenue which was stated as $265 Billion according to the fiscal in the year 2018 and one of the world's most valued company. it is the world's third largst mobile manufacturing unit in the world after Samsung and Huawei. The company Apple has it's CEO in Tim Cook.

Apple has always been keen when it comes to International mergers with other comapnies. It had it's first merger with Next Software Inc. dated December 20, 1996. Tim Cook (CEO Apple) in an interview said that the company acquires or takes-over another comapny every two or three weeks on an average. It has already acquired around 25-30 comapnies in the last six months. Few Interantional mergers of the comapny which have really made a mark are with Shazam, Siri, Emagic, Beats Electronics, Anobit Technologies, PrimeSense.

Yes, the comapany has definitely faced challenges in the recent years,these mergers have been "Strategic mergers" which means that these comapnies were overpaid with all due respect. Although, it is very critical to analyse these kind of questions as it requires careful and pre acquiistion analysis.

The company has made some cross-culture marketing mistakes. In the course of cross-border M&A, the venture occupied will stumble upon civilizing distinction and argument. The challenge lies in how to add these cultural differences and abolish the conflicts. It creates a problem between people from different cultures and communities as every culture has it's own set of rituals, practices, beliefs etc. The company's core values should not be disturbed in the process of mergers and should be mended in such a way that it is people-friendly and should incorporate diverse cultures.

The cross-culture marketing blunders could be avoided in the following ways:

1) The buyer should respect the culture of the target company and try to understand the culture.

2) The company should not use fixed values to judge the other company’s culture, but instead try to understand and give value to the values of the other comapny as well.

3) Effective communication plays an important role between organisations/ companies/ MNC's in their run for success.