Marketing Mix at Dell Inc

Marketing can be viewed as a set of functions that include product development, packaging, pricing, advertising, selling, distribution and customer service.  Marketing tactics are referred to as the â€Å"4Ps†: product,  place, promotion, and price. (Kotler, 2003). The marketing mix is probably the most famous phrase in marketing. It was James Culliton, who coined the expression Marketing Mix and it was Jerome McCarthy, who described the variables of marketing mix in terms of the four Ps. The product variables include: 1. Product line and range, 2. Design, quality, features, models, style, size and warranty, 3. Packaging, type, materials, label, 4. Branding and trade mark, 5. Service, pre-sale and after-sale, 6. New Products. The place variables are: 1. Channels of distributions, types of intermediaries, channel policy and design, location of outlets, channel remuneration, and dealer-principal relations, 2. Physical distribution, transportation, warehousing, inventory, order processing, etc. The price variables are: 1. Pricing policies, levels of prices, levels of margins, discounts and rebates, 2. Terms of delivery, payment terms, credit terms and installment facilities, 3. Resale price maintenance. Promotion variables are: 1. Personal selling, objectives, quality of sales force, cost level, level of motivation, and level of effort, 2. Advertising, media mix, budgets, allocations, and programs, 3. Sales promotional efforts, display, contests, trade promotions, 4. Publicity and public relations. The application of marketing mix in the case of Dell Inc. can be illustrated as follows: About Dell: Dell Inc. supplies PCs to business and domestic customers across the globe using direct marketing approach. In addition, Dell supplies a range of IT products and services to businesses, including powerful servers, storage, workstations, notebooks, and desktops. Dell employs approximately 47,800 people worldwide. Total sales currently exceed $43.5bn per annum. Product: Dell places product quality as one of the main criteria. Recently Dell voluntarily recalled certain Dell-branded batteries with cells manufactured by Sony and offered free replacements for these batteries.   This is because it has been found that under rare conditions, it is possible for these batteries to overheat, which could pose a risk of fire. This measure shows how much importance Dell places on product quality. The main part of Dell’s success is its strategy of offering consumers ‘choice and control’ when it comes to product purchase. Buyers can click through Dell and assemble computer system piece by piece, choosing components like hard drive size and processor speed based on their budgets and needs.   This direct contact with consumers gives Dell a competitive advantage. Dell's approach to innovation is customer driven. Moreover, Dell has returned to one year standard warranties on all its products. Dell builds computers on a just-in-time (JIT), build-to-order (BTO) basis. Therefore, if a new technology emerges it can be included immediately. Promotion: By catering to customers across nations from the internet and through regional centers, Dell has acquired the location strategy advantage. From 1999, Dell has engaged in extensive marketing campaigns. The â€Å"Be Direct† promotion campaign has changed the way consumer view Dell. The campaign focus on consumer benefits of new technology rather than comparing its products with other rival products or company. Dell advertises in the national newspapers, computer magazines, on the Internet and TV and by placing inserts in newspapers and magazines. Dell's advertising campaigns are designed with one central objective – to get a potential customer to ring up or go online and order a computer. Dell measures the impact of each individual marketing campaign by assessing the volume of calls to sales representatives and the number of clicks to the Dell website. The company also uses direct mail. Dell publishes various 24-page monthly catalogues, describing available product ranges. Different catalogues are geared to separate Dell markets – one for the small businesses and the other for domestic customers. This is sent to a selected group of customers who are on Dell's mailing lists. The Internet offers many advantages to a direct marketing company. Products can be shown and described in detail on a website. Customers can browse at their leisure without leaving their home or office (Business2000, 2005). Dell has long been using rebates and discounts as part of its promotion campaign. This helped it to survive competition in the industry. Dell often used to offer brief promotions such as extra memory or a free flat-panel display that might not have remained available if a consumer took a day or two to make a purchasing decision. Rebates have long been popular with electronics retailers, because they allow for higher list prices and because many customers never bother filling out the forms. Price: Dell is able to offer competitive pricing mainly because it uses the JIT – Just in time inventory model. The JIT/BTO approach means that Dell does not have to keep stocks of components or readymade computers. At Dell Inc. usually no component is in the factory for more than three days (Business2000, 2005). Stock, which is also called inventory, costs money. Dell does not have these costs and, therefore, can sell to the customer at a lower price. Further, by having regionalized production centers, Dell has diversified the risk of concentration of labor, production costs, and transportation costs. When production and transportation costs are cut down, the pricing can be competitive. For example basing plants in Xiamen, China Dell has been able to provide products and services at the local prices. By following a business model that allows a consumer to design his own computer cost of carrying inventory is minimized. This allows the company to offer its products at competitive rates. Place: The company manufactures its computer systems in six locations: Austin, Texas; Nashville, Tenn.; Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Eldorado do Sul, Brazil (Americas); Limerick, Ireland (Europe, Middle East and Africa); Penang, Malaysia (Asia Pacific and Japan) and Xiamen, China (China). Dell sells its products and services worldwide†¦ By catering to customers across nations from the internet and through regional centers, Dell has acquired the location strategy advantage. The company's strategy of selling over the Internet — with no retail outlets and no middleman — has been as discussed, admired and imitated as any e-commerce model.   Dell's e-commerce website, www.dell.com, is one of the busiest in the world. The site is distributed across 86 countries, using 28 languages or dialects and 29 different currencies (Business2000, 2005). On the website, customers can review, configure, and price computer systems for themselves. They can place an order online and then track the order from the manufacturing stage to actual delivery. This gives greater market reach to the company. Conclusion: Dell is one of the most successful companies in the world. Though we may study the marketing mix in order to understand the success of Dell Inc., it must be mentioned that the Dell combination of direct marketing and just-in-time, build-to-order manufacturing brings the benefits of low cost and high quality to each and every customer. It is this focus on customer value that is truly responsible for Dell's market leadership position. Bibliography: Annual Report, Dell Inc., 2005 Official Website, Dell Inc., 2006, http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/corp/background/en/facts?c=us&l=en&s=corp&~section=000 Philip Kotler, Marketing Management, 2003. Business2000 (2005). Dell- Directly from Dell to the Customer. http://www.business2000.ie/cases/cases_8th/case1.htm   

When Antibiotics Quit Working Essays

When Antibiotics Quit Working Essays When Antibiotics Quit Working Essay When Antibiotics Quit Working Essay When Antibiotics Quit Working Name: Course: Date: When Antibiotics Quit Working Introduction Antibiotics are medicines that are especially made to fight off bacterial infections. They do this by killing the bacteria or by hindering its growth. Bacteria are found all over the human body apart from the blood and the spinal fluid. Most of the bacteria in the body are useful and beneficial. However, some bacteria are harmful and cause diseases and illnesses in the body. When one takes antibiotics, both the useful and harmful bacteria are targeted. In most cases, antibiotics are effective and they help ward off diseases. However, in some cases, the bacteria are able to resist antibiotics and they survive and continue multiplying. This happens when the bacterium undergoes some changes, which prevents the antibiotics from working effectively. The bacteria become stronger, and it is able to resist the antibiotic. This means that stronger antibiotics have to be developed so that they can kill the bacteria. People should look for other alternatives before using antibiotics. Some of th e diseases can be prevented by observing hygiene. This reduces the chance of sickness, and it avoids later use of antibiotics. Discussion Antibiotics work under selective pressure. They are able to kill off some bacteria, but other bacteria often survive. The stronger a bacteria is, the higher the chances that it will survive even after exposure to antibiotics. The resistance bacteria remain and they reproduce. Bacteria reproduce easily because they split by half. Antibiotics target the bacteria cell wall, which defines the shape of the bacteria and protects them from outside interference. The antibiotic kills the cell walls, exposing and busting the bacteria, killing it in the process. Both gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria have peptidoglycan. However, the peptiglycan in the bacteria differs in thickness. It is thicker in the gram-positive cell walls. When the antibiotics are present, they destroy the peptidoglycan and they prevent the formation of the peptide cross-links. Gram-negative bacteria are more resistant to antibiotics because it has an outer membrane that makes it difficult for the antibiotics to dif fuse. The outside membrane in the gram-negative bacteria has pores that allow nutrients to pass through, but they block large antibiotic molecules. These bacteria are able to change the size of the pores by enabling them to become smaller, and this resists the efforts of the antibiotics, even though they have small molecules. The pores prevent the antibiotics from reaching the surface of the cytoplasmic membrane. The gram-positive bacteria have many layers of peptidoglycan, but they do not have a barrier that would prevent the small molecules from passing. This increases the effectiveness of the antibiotics because it makes it easier for the antibiotics to pass through the molecules (Salyers Whitt., 2005). Continued and unnecessary use of antibiotics can lead to antibiotic resistance. The more a person takes antibiotics, the more the bacteria become used to the antibiotics, and the more they become resistant. When that person becomes sick again, then he cannot use the same antibiotic because it will not be effective. Some people take antibiotics whenever they feel pain or discomfort, even when their sickness is not caused by bacteria. They take antibiotics for colds and flu, even though these are caused by viruses. When the antibiotics enter the body, they kill off other bacteria, which are beneficial to the body. Some of the harmful bacteria are left over, and this makes them stronger (CDC, 2012). Some bacteria are able to escape the effects of the antibiotics because they have the ability to do so. When such a bacteria survives it multiplies in the body. Since the new bacteria are developed from the bacteria that managed to escape, they contain the elements of the original bacteria, which were resistant. Therefore, the new bacteria become resistant to the antibiotics, which were used previously. A bacterium develops resistance to antibiotics by neutralizing them before they begin working. When this happens, the antibiotics are not able to work in the body. Some other bacteria undergo a mutation or change in their genetic material, from other bacteria that are resistant. This makes the mutated bacteria resistant to antibiotics (Devitt et al., 1998). If the antibiotic-resistant bacteria that causes most of the infections, it could mean an increase in disease and illnesses. Many people would suffer because they would not be able to get treatment for their diseases. The rates of bacterial infections would increase tremendously. It would cost much more to treat common conditions caused by bacteria, since antibiotics would not work. However, despite this, the world would not experience the same kind of problems it had before the invention of antibiotics. During this time, many people died because they did not know how to prevent infectious diseases. Nowadays people have learnt a lot about disease prevention. They have especially learnt how to prevent disease by using simple practical measures such as maintaining hygiene, sterilizing equipment, and using antiseptics and disinfectants. These measures have largely contributed to the decline of non-viral diseases. Conclusion People have developed an awareness of alternative treatments using herbs and food plants, and they have improved their diets. This has enabled them to maintain good health and avoid diseases. However, if many of the infections occurred because of antibiotic resistance, then researchers would have to find ways of developing cures and dealing with the problem. This is possible because when penicillin was discovered, people did not think that there would be an antibiotic solution to deal with the problem of recurring infectious diseases. Research holds the answers to antibiotic resistance bacteria. Science can develop a solution to deal with the problem, just as it did when it first discovered antibiotics. For instance, researchers have developed methods that use viruses to kill bacteria, instead of using antibiotics. They have also found ways through which they can use bacterial protein to kill bacteria (Salyers Whitt, 2005). References: CDC (2012). Mission critical: Preventing antibiotic resistance. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved from cdc.gov/features/antibioticresistance/ Devitt, T., Tenenbaum, D., Toburen, A., Trebach, S. (1998). Microbes: What doesn’t kill them makes them stronger. Retrieved from http://whyfiles.org/038badbugs/index.html Johnson, George. Essentials of the living world. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Salyers, A. A., Whitt, D. D. (2005). Revenge of the microbes: How bacterial resistance is undermining the antibiotic miracle. Washington, DC: ASM Press

General Armstrong Custer essays

General Armstrong Custer essays Custer Didnt Dies For Your Sins, Sitting Bull Did In Custer Died For Your Sins, Vine Deloria, Jr. uses his sarcastic and satirical tone to reveal many falsehoods and stereotypes of Native American culture. He also uses his satirical tone to denote those who have clainmed heritage that is obviously not theirs. Deloria wasnted to make it a point to tell young Natives to find their own identity and not let an expert do it for them. Throughout American culture, Native Americans have been the most falsely represented subset of Americas population. They have been identified with the aura of the savage warrior...and the instinctive animal (3). American folklore presents the existince of Native Americans to the world as violent savages and dimensional primitives. Even being called an Indian is a little appaling, even to the minority of Native Americans. The lack of a tropical climate and the absense of elephents apperently did not tip off the [Spanish] explorers that they were not in India(5). The Native Americans are and have always been in a constant struggle to defend their identities and land. The confusion and stereotypes from another culture does not lighten the load of their struggle. The claiming of Indian heritage was nonexistent until the Native American culture was found to have some sort of significance to the devopment of the United States and its culture. After being of European descent became boring, having some sort of blood tie with the frontier...in order to experience what it means to be an American(4) guaranteed them the satisfaction of being as American as apple pie. Native Americans are, again, put into a position where they have to defend their identities and land from those who want to claim it as theirs. Non-natives also make an attempt to claim Native American heritage. When they claim it most of them claim it on their grandmothe...

Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance Man

Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance Man Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452 in Vinci, Tuscany. He was the epitome of the term Renaissance man during the High Italian Renaissance. Any subject- and there were many- toward which he directed his insatiable curiosity, artistic talent, and keen scientific mind found itself dissected, improved upon and cataloged for posterity. Leonardo, truly, was a man before his time. Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.- Leonardo da Vinci Early Life Though illegitimate, Leonardo was taken in and raised by his father. A child of unearthly beauty, Leonardo showed precocious genius in math, music, and art. His greatest desire was to be apprenticed to a painter, a profession which was looked down upon at the time. Eventually, his father was worn down by the boys undeniable talent and took him to Florence to study painting, sculpting, and engineering under the great Andrea del Verrocchio. Leonardo quickly outstripped his master (though he continued to study with Verrocchio until around 1476) and was admitted to the Florence painters guild in 1472. Body of Work Leonardo spent about twenty years in the service of Lodovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan (who frequently neglected to pay Leonardo). His output during this period included two of his best-known paintings: The Madonna of the Rocks (1483-85) and the mural The Last Supper (1495-98). When Milan was seized by French troops in 1499, Leonardo returned to Florence. It was here that he painted one of the most famous portraits of all time, The Mona Lisa, more correctly known as La Gioconda (1503-06). Leonardo spent his later years moving between Florence, Rome, and France, working on a variety of projects. He lived long enough to be appreciated and well-paid, a rarity among artists. Throughout it all, he kept prodigious notebooks, in mirror writing, to keep track of his ideas, designs, and numerous sketches. Leonardo eventually settled in France, at the invitation of Francis I, an ardent admirer. He died on May 2, 1519, in the castle of Cloux, near Amboise, France.

Grid Computing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Grid Computing - Essay Example Grid computing increases the throughput of a networked system. Various heterogeneous but networked resources across administrative boundaries can be modeled in to virtual computer architecture for resource sharing. The concept of grid computing is to solve complex computational problems that can not be solved by the limited resources of a single computer or group of computers within an organization. It is apparent from the above figure that networking technologies are more rapidly than the microprocessor technology. There is always a large chunk of processing power that remains underutilized in many computer clusters. Advancement in networking technology can logically be used to club all these underutilized resource thus solving the crunch of processing power in some computing clusters and considerably reducing the processing cost. Software complexity has been rapidly increasing in last four decades and it has reached to such a level that it became difficult to deal with. With this, need of swiftness in response to business requirement is also increasing. IT industry has been through various computing architectures of distributed processing for better resource utilization. This led to the evolution of various programming languages running on different platforms and a number of networking products. However, full resource integration is still very complex due to multiple development platforms. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is now considered as next big leap in computational architecture which may help IT industry to meet complex future needs. The concept of SOA has been in development since a long time. Ever since its inception it has been bogged down due to various problems of integrating different available object models and development of a robust architecture for simple, fast and secure integration of various development platforms. Defining SOA An SOA application is a composition of various distributed services performing some well defined tasks. A service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a specific type of distributed system in which the agents are "software services" that perform some well-defined operation (i.e., it provides a service), and this type of architecture can be invoked outside of the context of a larger application. IBM also defines SOA as

Harold Lasswell's theory of the socialization Essay

Harold Lasswell's theory of the socialization - Essay Example This is why even the best of governments are known as necessary evils. The difference between the society and the government is that the society has unlimited wants whereas the government is a source of the so called ‘wickedness’. For instance, Friedrich Engels attacked the state by stating that the important fact about the state on religion is that it puts the anxiety of mankind before itself. Often, it has been said that only those who are corrupted seek power. Political affairs are a much variegated web of many vices and virtues along with a small possibility of truth and false hood of every shape interwoven (Lasswell 8). Moreover, politicians and statesmen are compared to men who are skillful in juggling and making all kinds of incantations and tricks of all kinds. With this kind of men it is very difficult to escape their influence. In spite of all the evil associated with power, not everything about power is a symbol of evil. Power can be used for worthy purposes by the good and the strong. Not all those with power work for strange and cunning occults arts to gain power and keep it. As for those who believe that power is evil, the sometimes agree that not all who use power are evildoers. On the contrary, some men in power have been named as the heroes of mankind, great men in history, liberators, founders of nations and even statesmen (Lasswell 9). From this perspective, power, personality and government are judged favorably. Recent expansions and discoveries in the psychological, social and medical science have added to the knowledge of power and those who seek power. From a social political objective, there is instrumentation of democratic values. The connection between power and personality can be associated with service of human dignity. According to Lasswell, power is an interpersonal situation; those who hold power are empowered (10). As long as those in power give

Pandemic Flu plan Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Pandemic Flu plan - Case Study Example that has seen heath experts and governments come together to formulate policies and plans on how to curb and mange influenza so as to reduce loss of life through such pandemic. Communities at their local levels have come up with ways to handle influenza so to protect the community members from suffering and deaths. This paper indicates a community plan outlines strategies to curb influenza in Glen Falls in New York. To enhance influenza review in Glen Falls, the plan shall initiate measures to protect community members from attacks and loss of lives as a result of flu. They include; This shall be meant to promote and boost the immunity of villagers through anti viral drugs and vaccine. Parents shall be advised to take their children fro vaccine so as to enable them withstand the effects of influenza. Immunization awareness shall be carried out to educate the people on the need to consider immunization as the possible solution for this challenge. Expectant mothers shall be advised to attend prenatal and antenatal care program in which vaccination and immunization for the unborn baby and the mother shall be done to offer remedy for this problem. To educate the community, seminars and workshops shall be carried out in the community to enlighten the people. Cultural dances and performances where by communal artists shall be used to perform and make skits more so in the evenings which shall bring together members of the community to learn on the need to take on immunization program to remedy influenza. Influenza pandemic requires proper planning that involves partie s of every level such as communities and families and individuals so as to slow and respond so as to recover from this disaster. This is because influenza has been identified to cause loss of life through illness making it a public threat. The plan will involve health care providers in advocating the control of influenza in the community. Hospitals shall print leaflets which shall have the information