每次新产品即将推出时，泄露的信息都会在实际推出前几个月在媒体和互联网上引发猜测。这创造了在付费营销活动之前的免费营销势头。
The Apple store is a place where customers are able to sense the Apple experience delivered by the products, but also by the well-trained staff. Employees are trained not to focus on sales but on building relationships and creating loyal customers. This approach makes customers feel like Apple enriches their lives, thus improves brand image and creates value (The Business Review, 2011).
苹果商店是一个让顾客能够感受到产品带来的苹果体验的地方，也是训练有素的员工带来的体验。员工接受的培训不是专注于销售，而是建立关系和创造忠诚的客户。这种方法让客户觉得苹果丰富了他们的生活，从而改善了品牌形象并创造了价值。
Partner country 伙伴国
Businesses are often unable to sustain continuous high levels of productivity over long periods of time without accessing knowledge from beyond their boundaries – they require external knowledge to develop new innovations (Haeussler et al. 2014). According to Bing-Sheng et al. (1998), increasing formation of strategic alliances can be seen as a response toglobalisationand increasing uncertainty and complexity in the business environment.
如果不从企业边界之外获取知识，企业往往无法长期保持持续的高水平生产力——它们需要外部知识来开发新的创新。战略联盟的日益形成可以被视为对全球化以及商业环境中日益增加的不确定性和复杂性的回应。
A strategic alliance is an agreement between two or more organisations to collaborate on a specific business activity or an on-going project, whilst maintaining their own identity. The main aim of an alliance is for both firms to benefit from achieving economies of scale and greater access to target markets, sharing of knowledge and expertise as well as the reduction of risk and costs thus gaining competitive advantage (Bing-Sheng et al. 1998).
战略联盟是两个或多个组织之间的协议，在保持自身身份的同时，就特定的商业活动或正在进行的项目进行合作。联盟的主要目的是使两家公司都能从实现规模经济和更多地进入目标市场、分享知识和专业知识以及降低风险和成本中受益，从而获得竞争优势。
Apple Inc. has recently announced a new partnership with IBM. The main aim of the alliance is to team up “market-leading strengths” of both companies to renovate enterprise mobility with the use of IMB’s data and analytical capabilities and Apple’s hardware and software as well as unique customer experience (Apple, 2014). According to Forbes (2014), IBM will also sell iPhones and iPads to business clients worldwide. This demonstrates that Apple will benefit from greater access to new target markets whilst IBM will advantage from selling Apple’s products to their customers. Furthermore, a strategic alliance with IBM poses a great potential advantage for Apple as IBM holds extensive understanding of enterprise business conditions and demands. Consequently, Apple could act opportunistically and learn from their competitor.
苹果公司最近宣布与IBM建立新的合作伙伴关系。该联盟的主要目标是联合两家公司的“市场领先优势”，利用IMB的数据和分析能力、苹果的硬件和软件以及独特的客户体验来翻新企业移动性。据《福布斯》报道，IBM还将向全球商业客户销售iPhone和iPad。这表明，苹果将从更多地进入新的目标市场中受益，而IBM将从向客户销售苹果产品中受益。此外，与IBM的战略联盟为苹果带来了巨大的潜在优势，因为IBM对企业的商业状况和需求有着广泛的了解。因此，苹果可以采取机会主义行动，向竞争对手学习。
Partner selection is vital to forming a successful strategic alliance (Hill, 2014). IBM will help Apple achieve its strategic goals through greater enterprise market access, gaining access to critical core competencies of IBM and sharing the costs and risks of new product development. On the other hand, according to Hill (2014), the failure rate for strategic alliances seems to be high; this is why an alliance should be structured so that threat of opportunism is minimised. Contractual safeguards have to be written into the alliance agreement to protect core competencies of the company (Hill, 2014). Apple and IBM both agreed to bring together complementary skills and assets that neither company could develop on its own (Forbes, 2014) – this reduces the threat of opportunism from both sides as both companies will benefit from the alliance.
合作伙伴的选择对于建立成功的战略联盟至关重要。IBM将通过扩大企业市场准入、获得IBM的关键核心竞争力以及分担新产品开发的成本和风险，帮助苹果实现其战略目标。另一方面，Hill认为，战略联盟的失败率似乎很高；这就是为什么应该构建一个联盟，以最大限度地减少机会主义的威胁。必须将合同保障写入联盟协议，以保护公司的核心竞争力。苹果和IBM都同意将两家公司都无法独自发展的互补技能和资产整合在一起——这减少了双方机会主义的威胁，因为两家公司都将从联盟中受益。
An additional way of successfully managing a strategic alliance is to recognise opportunities ahead of the competition (Haeussler et al. 2014). Critics outline that Apple didn’t r
