DELL'S STRATEGY FOR SUCCESS

Dell's Strategy for Success

Dell's Strategy for Success

Introduction

Dell Incorporated was founded by Michael Dell in 1984 and went on to public in 1988 at NASDAQ. He believes the concept of build-to-order and direct contact with customer has advantages to compete with most of the manufacturer in the personal computer industry. By offering low cost products and quality services directly to customers had assisted the company to capture most of the market share among its competitors at the early 1990s.

The concept of direct business model is to eliminate middleman and high inventory cost, therefore lower price, faster response time and better quality products can be offered to customers. This marketing concept is also successfully applied to other regions such as Europe, Asia, Middle East and Africa which most of the people believed it would not work at the time. (Dell 2007c)Today, Dell is one of the largest computer manufacturers in the market and their mission of providing excellent experience to customer has achieved (Kotler; Fahey & Jatusripitak 2005).

Marketing Effectiveness Evaluation

The evaluation of marketing effectiveness (Kotler 2003) shows Dell's strength on all marketing aspects and assists the company to improve both in short term and long term.

Customer Philosophy

Dell's segmentation approach not only towards their products but also customers as well. He had split the segments into three categories - large and medium sized companies, educational and government organizations, and small businesses and consumers. These approaches have helped the sales team to focus on the required knowledge and also customize the service level to each of the target segments (Goldman 2008). The direct selling model has helped Dell to understand what customer really needs and wants. Their orders are made by phone, internet or fax which provided the company with first hand comments and preferences on specific models or services.

Integrated Marketing Organization

Every employee in Dell fully understands the fundamental concept that drives the company into one of the top computer manufacturer in the world. Top management spent great amount of time explain and communicate to everybody what needs to be achieved in order to provide total customer experience. They are not just setting up meetings to answer questions but to involve everyone to create value for the customers. Electronic mails are frequently sent to employees to share with success stories. Global case studies and achievement from competitors are well studied in the weekly newsletter, which provide global views and ideas to different regional office (Fitzpatrick 2007). Engineers and designers are encouraged to involve at the early stage with sales teams for product planning. It is not an easy step for some professional who might want to focus on the specialty but Dell believes these are the best solution to minimize customer dissatisfaction during the buying process (James 1999).

Adequate Marketing Information

Dell.com is the virtual platform that the company uses to collect customers' feedback toward certain products or services. Well trained staff monitors the response and review on a daily bases, then the information will be studied for future ...