Matching Dell
BA 4700 October 12th, 2010
Bing Bai Zexin Li Ian Ruehle Erin Strack Chun Zhang

Introduction

The Dell Computer Corporation was founded in 1984 by Michael Dell, who began the company by refurbishing IBM clones out of his dorm room for extra money. From the beginning and through the 1990’s, the company grew quickly and was very successful. Dell used a cost leadership strategy and focus on creating products that were already in the market place, but changed the timing of production and the method of distribution that was in place with the company’s competitors by assembling computers to order and selling directly to the customers. The company focused on creating value for customers and meeting their needs, but into the …show more content…

Dell struggles in their corporate image by comparison to Apple. Apple is very clear about portraying their culturally savvy image. Although they are not Dell’s direct competition, there is a lesson to be learned. Dell’s competitors were able to gain on Dell’s market share simply by implementing their operations model. The apparent Achilles heal is the lack of individuality with their image. Once the competitors were able to manage their operations in the lean and efficient way of Dell, the company lost their competitive advantage. Dell obviously made actions to try to reconnect through retailers to the end user. If they are able to culturally connect with their consumers, then they will have a shot in becoming the number one computer supplier once again.

Technological It is obvious that Dell is a technology company. The computer industry is strictly technology based. The growth of technology in the genre of computers is exponential. Dell had a significant strong arm in the ability to reduce costs, and was able to pass their efficiency to the customer. The supply chain does play a key role in keeping the costs low, however the basis is technology. When software and hardware drop in price due to new development in technology, it allows other companies to cut costs for their customers. In the case, we see that Dell’s competitors such as Hewlett Packard where able to do this. The