The businessman's tablet

Abstract

In the wake of Apple's unbound success, firms from all areas of the consumer electronics industry are delving into the tablet PC market, but many of these entrants have underestimated the importance of innovation, and fallen into a homogenous slough of tablet offerings. Achieving product differentiation has been laborious and unyielding for the tablet makers, until now. Microsoft, creator of the Surface Tablet PC has accepted the product differentiation challenge, two years after the modem tablet category's inception, and produced a tablet PC suitable for enterprise solutions, rather than media consumption. In order to avoid the difficult barriers to entry erected by Apple, the Microsoft Surface is aimed at a consumer segment seeking starkly different product benefits. To properly assess the consumer segment, a qualitative research study was undertaken. The objective of this study was to properly understand the Surface's prospective customers and their purchase behaviors so that marketing communications can be more effectively segmented, targeted, and positioned. The study examines the type and depth of consumers' product perceptions, and product research and purchase behaviors. The study findings, in combination with findings from secondary research describe a desirable consumer segment, made up of affluent, older businesspeople that currently lack knowledge of the tablet's enterprise capabilities but are open to learning about and utilizing a Microsoft tablet in the workplace. Market and media strategy were developed to effectively position the Surface as an elegant, professional, and, accomplished symbol of its owner. The Apple iPad and the HP Ultrabook Folio make up the Surface's competitive frame of reference. Marketing initiatives embrace its productive nature, enterprise-centric design, and ability to harmoniously integrate multiple devices into one. Integrated marketing communications combine each tool to create supplemental benefits atop traditional advertising through unified brand image, a multipronged touch-point strategy, and greater rewards from individual marketing initiatives.