IBM

Marketing Environmental Factor Analysis

Hassan Bukhari, Trevor Hunt, Josh Roberts, Greg Tancreti, Shixang Wang Professor Amendah MKT 113 - Intro to Marketing 27 February 2012

Marketing Environmental Factor Analysis

Introduction:

The company we choose was International Business Machines Corporation or commonly known as IBM. IBM is a well-known computer company that has been around since 1911 and has continued to grow to this very day. Some history about IBM is that in 1940 IBM had solidified its place in the technology sector. It was one of the globes biggest typewriter manufactures and became even better known in 1952 when they released their first computer. From that point on IBM never looked back and developed into a multibillion-dollar company. IBM's main objective is to serve its customers proudly, but also to improve its software capabilities. Over the past decade they have been buying up companies at an exponential rate. The reason for this is to help improve their equipment that already exists. To prove this IBM came out in 2010 and announced that they would spend close to twenty billion dollars in company buyouts over the next five years. IBM stands by their commit to grow and improve as a company. Of course this would not all be impossible without committed employees, which IBM has. In 2010 they had roughly 420,000 people working for them. That may sounds like a large number, but it was shown that IBM continues to grow and has a 6.8% growth rate in employees over the past two years. With a growth in employees they also saw a 4.3% growth in sales (Jason,2010). IBM is a very strong company and in 2010 they reported their sales at about hundred million. One reason they have to do this is because they are a public company, which means their stock is traded daily. Since it's a public company they have to share every piece of information about their sales. IBM is recognized as a strong company and to show that it is included in the S&P 500 and Dow Jones. Both of these are stock markets index, which give investors some perspective on how the market is doing. Overall IBM is a very strong company that continues to develop and always plans for the future.

Micro Factors:

IBM's micro environmental factors or better known as their Immediate Environment revolves around the company, their corporate partners and their competition. IBM is one of the world's largest producers of computer software and hard ware and is based out of Armonk, New York. In 2008, their annual revenue was $58,892 million, which was an 8.8% increase from the previous year. This increase was attributed to the company's growth across geographic regions. The company's key executives are two senior management board members, Michael Daniels and R. Frankin Kern. Daniels was the vice president of the company since 2005 until he was replaced by Kern. Daniels is a member of the IBM performance team and is the company's Senior State Executive for Connecticut. Kern has been the vice president ...