MARKETING PLAN

Marketing Plan - Dell

Marketing Plan - Dell

Introduction

Dell is one of the leading technology companies, offering a broad range of products, including desktop PCs, servers, networking products, storage, mobility products, software and peripherals, and services. The company operates in the Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific. It is headquartered in Round Rock, Texas and employs 78,900 people including 2,400 temporary employees.

Dell is a diversified information technology providers and partners directly to customers cover a wide range of global products and services. Dell in "Fortune" magazine "America the most appreciated companies" rankings, and ranked No. 1 in "Global most appreciated companies" rankings, ranked third. Dell commitment to provide our customers design, build and deliver innovative customized based systems in order to provide customers with outstanding value.

Spanning over 20 years, the company has always been associated with designing, manufacturing and customising products and services to satisfy a diversified range of customers including individual customers to corporate and retailing businesses. The company's philosophy to deal with customers one-on-one (Gupta, Lehmann, Stuart, 2004) has become a management model for other companies. Having gained the market leadership position in computer products and services, Dell's team have always been careful in sustaining its marketing strategy of providing standard-based computing solutions.

Marketing Strategy

Dell's marketing strategy is global. It realises that being closer to the customers is essential in carrying out its marketing strategies as well as in enabling it to build customer base. (Bradley, 2005) First by establishing the Internet infrastructure for booking/orders related activities it has been able to increase its customer base from existing markets. Using the same infrastructure it has been able to carry out its marketing strategies in new offices as well. However, Dell differentiates in its marketing tactics in that it believes in establishing a brick and mortar market presence. This is why the company has established sales offices and manufacturing outlets across North America, Europe, Asia and South America. This way it has been able to gauge the local customers' needs as well as services desired.

Apart from the above customer level niche marketing, Dell also believes in reducing competition through collaboration. Unlike other leaders in the industry such as HP and Compaq, Dell does not believe in taking over existing competitors to eliminate competition. Instead the company have always pride itself in using partnerships and associations for integrated marketing. For example Xerox's addition to the company as a partner for providing printing products and services has served the purpose of integrating one more technology to its lists of comprehensive business services. As James Vanderslice, Vice Chairman of Dell says: "By adding Xerox to our roster of preferred printing partners, we are even better equipped to serve our customers with a full range of office printing technologies that provide end-to-end solutions. The Xerox brand is synonymous with quality, technology leadership and world-class services. We share these core values." ("Dell and Xerox Forge Strategic Marketing Tie").

Not only Dell believes in industry wide collaboration but also in global collaboration. It has based offices in different countries of ...