The Research For Marketing Channel Of DL Company

DL Founded in 1984, by virtue of its unique direct marketing model, DL got rapid growth in the past 20 years and became the worldwide leading computer company with an annual turnover of over $60 Billion. In 2006,DL lost its number one of world's computer sales and it engaged the first negative growth in company's history. Thereby,"Could direct marketing model still helps DL on its continuous developing?"Through the analysis we know that with the rapid development of PC industry, computer product shows its dual-characters which are different properties of consumer goods and industrial material. The two properties just match with the features of indirect and direct marketing model. With a direct marketing model, DL takes the advantage of price and inventory, meets the requirement of customization, manage the customer relationship effectively. But Direct Marketing's weaknesses on sales coverage, after-sales service and acceptance in emerging market prevent DL to grow in consumer computer market. So DL should give up the belief of direct marketing, fully introduce indirect channel on consumer computers and continual to develop direct channel on commercial computers. Direct and indirect marketing appears to be conflicted but have their own advantages and disadvantages. It is the trend to effectively combine the two marketing models in PC industry, and it is also an important topic for academia and industry. No matter direct or indirect, the fundamental task of channel is to fulfill customer's needs, and any successful channel is customer-centric. Therefore, both direct and indirect should focus on the following aspects: customer needs, customer experience, customer segmentation, customer relationships, customer value, customer service.After analyzed DL direct model's core competence by using Porter's value chain analysis method, as well as review the current practice of indirect channel model in computer industry, I creatively proposed a new combined marketing channel model which based on DL's existing direct marketing channel and corresponding supply chain structure. The new model has retained as much advantages from original DL's supply chain, like low inventory, customization, and information distribution. It also utilizes the complementary between two marketing models to make up the weaknesses of each other. In addition, the paper also analyzed the possible conflict and related solutions for DL when combining direct and indirect marketing channel...