Ps of Marketing for Dell

¶ … Ps of Marketing for Dell Laptop

Analyzing the Marketing Mix for a Dell Laptop

Product, price, promotion and place or distribution are the cornerstones of effective marketing strategies. The use of these four components of the marketing mix for the positioning and selling of high technology are critical as there is often little differentiation at the product level, with greater positioning being accomplished through value-added services and support. The role of the 4 Ps of marketing is to set a framework in place to execute effective marketing, communications and selling strategies (Goi, 2009). Applying these concepts to the marketing of a Dell laptop is the goal of this analysis.

Applying the Four Ps of Marketing to a Dell Laptop

The PC industry is one that competes on time-to-market and the breadth of features within one product or system relative to another. The creativity, ingenuity and innovation that one company has relative to another often make a major difference in how they are perceived in the market and the level of sales they achieve. In the laptop market, these aspects of product design are critical for a system to achieve market share and be successful from a profitability standpoint as well. The 4 Ps of marketing are foundational to any laptop attaining its sales and financial goals. Each aspect of the marketing mix is defined in this analysis.

Product

The use of industry-standard components including Intel processors, chipsets capable of communicating over TCP/IP-based networks, and operating systems compatible with a wide range of applications are essential for any laptop to be successful in the market. The extent to which these attributes are fine-tuned to a given customers' needs is very often the difference in how effective the company is in selling thousands to tens of thousands of units. For a Dell laptop, the synchronization of these product attributes to a given customers' needs is also a differentiator the company relies on to gain market position and competitive advantage. Dell is also unique in that they rely heavily on a mass customization or build-to-order strategy, giving customers the opportunity to define their own configurations for their laptops (Fields, 2006). This adds an order of complexity to their product strategies, yet has delivered major benefits from increased sales and higher levels of profitability as well. Dell works closely with Intel, Microsoft and thousands of other suppliers to ensure the product dimension of the marketing mix continues to be one of the most competitive aspects of their strategic plans and programs.

Price

The common perception is that price is often the most effective differentiator and catalyst for driving up sales of products. Ironically for laptops, where there are many competitors and the price is often already very low, dropping the price doesn't increase demand. The inelastic nature of the laptop market makes price a positioning variable in the marketing mix. By raising prices on certain laptops for example, Dell has been able to communicate greater value for them, which is especially the case in the higher-end build-to-order product models (Fields, 2006). Pricing is used as a means to communicate relative value and critical to the financial success of a given product. Dell uses pricing very effectively for communicating both market position and optimizing the potential for profitability.

Promotion

The promotional strategies for laptops center on both print and online media, with social networks being heavily used to launch new models. Dell relies on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and an extensive series of marketing automation and demand generation applications to promote their laptops. The website also serves the dual purpose of providing a product configurator, online ordering store and a wealth of product information as well (Fields, 2006). Promotion is heavily used for defining the value proposition of the laptops and also their unique, highly differentiated features.

Place or Distribution