Case Study of Dell : Inspiring the leadership
In 1984, at the age of 19, Michael Dell founded Dell Computer with a simple vision and business concept—that personal computers could be built to order and sold directly to customers. Michael Dell believed his approach to the PC business had two advantages: (1) bypassing distributors and retail dealers eliminated the markups of resellers and
(2) building to order greatly reduced the costs and risks associated with carrying large stocks of parts, components, and finished goods. While the company sometimes struggled during the 1986-1993 period trying to refine its strategy, build an adequate infrastructure, and establish market credibility against better-known rivals, Dell’s strategy …show more content…

In addition, Dell was making market inroads in other product categories. Its sales of data storage devices were growing rapidly, aided by a strategic alliance with EMC, a leader in the data storage. In 2001-2002, Dell began selling low-cost, data-routing switches—a product category where Cisco Systems was the dominant global leader. In late 2002 Dell introduced a new line of handheld PCs—the Axim X5 to compete against the higher-priced products of Palm, HP, and others; the Axim offered a solid but not trendsetting design, was packed with features, and was priced roughly 50 percent below the best-selling models of rivals. Starting in 2003, Dell planned to begin marketing Dell-branded printers and printer cartridges, product categories where Hewlett Packard was the global leader and a category that provided HP with the lion’s share of its profits. In January 2003, Dell announced that it would begin selling retail-store systems, including electronic cash registers, specialized software, services, and peripherals required to link retail-store checkout lanes to corporate information systems. Since the late 1990s, Dell had been marketing CD and DVD drives, printers, scanners, modems, monitors, digital cameras, memory cards, ZIP drives, and speakers made by a variety of manufacturers.
In a February 2003 article in Business 2.0, Michael Dell said, “The best way to describe us now is as a broad computer