Dell, Inc. is a holding company that conducts its business worldwide through its subsidiaries. It designs, develops, manufactures, markets, sells, and supports a wide range of products that are customized to individual customer requirements. Its products include mobility products, personal computers, software and peripherals, servers and networking, services, and storage.

Michael Dell, the flamboyant founder and chairman of Dell, started college at the University of Texas as a pre-med student but found time to establish a business selling random-access memory (RAM) chips and disk drives for IBM PCs. Dell bought products at cost from IBM dealers, who were required at the time to order large monthly quotas of PCs from IBM. Dell then resold his stock through newspapers and computer magazines at 10 to 15 percent below retail. By April 1984, Dell was grossing about $80,000 a month— enough to persuade him to drop out of coilege. Soon he started making and selling IBM clones under the brand name PC's Limited. Dell sold his machines directly to consumers, not through retail outlets as most other manufacturers did. By eliminating the retail markup, Dell could sell PCs at about 40 percent of the price of an IBM.

Michael Dell renamed his company Dell Computer and added international sales offices in 1987. In 1988, the company started selling to larger customers, including government agencies. That year (1 988), Dell Computer went public. In 1996, Dell started selling PCs and notebook computers through its website. This channel of order confirmation and shipping and handling is still the bread-and-butter means of addressing Dell's consumers' and enterprise customers' requirements. In 1997, Dei! entered the market for workstations and strengthened its consumer business by separating it from its smallbusiness unit and launching a leasing program for consumers. To diversify its revenue sources, in 2001 , Dell expanded its storage offerings when it agreed to resell systems from EMC. To grow its services unit, Dell acquired Microsoft software support specialist Plural in 2002.

Despite its success at grabbing PC market share, Dell continues to attack new markets. It has put increasing emphasis on server computers and storage devices for enterprises. Furthering its push beyond PCs, Dell has introduced a handheld computer, a line of Ethernet switches, and consumer electronics such as digital music players and liquid crystal display (LCD) televisions. It originally partnered with Lexmark to develop a line of Dell-branded printers, and it has formed additional partnerships to grow its printing line quickly. On the ser,/ices front, Dell has mirrored its straightforvvard approach to hardware sales, embracing a fixed-price model for offerings such as data migration and storage systems implementation. Dell is currently looking to international revenue to supplant sales in the PC-saturated U.S. market.

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Dell has thrived as downward-spiraling prices and commoditization washed over the PC industry, benefiting the company's custamers and bashing its competitors. Instead of battling the tide by attempting to erect proprietary systems, as HP and IBM often did, Dell used its low-cost, direct-sales model to ride the wave. In 2008, Dell announced PartnerDirect, a global program that brought its existing partner initiatives under one umbrella. Dell intends to expand the program globally. Continuing its strategy and efforts of better meeting customers' needs and demands, it began offering select products in retail stores in several countries in the Americas, Europe, and Asia during fiscal 2008. These actions represent the first steps in its retail strategy, which will allow Dell to extend its business model to reach customers that it had not been able to reach directly.

From 2009 to 2014, Dell got serious about ramping its solutions skills and capabilities with organic and inorganic investments in key intellectual propeny and talent. In 2009, the company acquired Perot Systems and launched a new business called Dell ^TM Services that gave customers end-to-end integrated technology (IT) services to help lower their total cost of IT ownership. Dell entered the smartphone market with the Mini from China Mobile. In February 201 1, it acquired Compellent Technologies, Inc., and in August 201 1, it acquired ForcelO Networks. In February 2012, Dell acquired AppAssure and followed that with the acquisition of Clerity Solutions n April 2012. On May 6, 2013, Deil announced the acquisition of Enstratius, a provider of software and consulting services that delivers hybrid-cloud and single-cloud management capabilities. By 2014, the company had its best solutions portfolio ever.

With intense competition for market share and customer patronage in 2014, Dell conducted a survey of recent purchasers of Dell PCs and notebooks. Dell wants to understand its consumers' primary use of its computers for Internet and other uses. Dell also wants to understand the satisfaction that its consumers derive from Dell products. Dell wants to estimate its customers' probability of repeat buying of Dell products and the extent to which its current customers will recommend Dell to their friends and family. Finally, Dell wants to understand if there is any correlation on any of these identified usage factors and the underlying demographic aspects of the classification of its customers. The following questionnaire was the one it used and the data file can be downloaded from the website for this book.

1. In gaining an understanding of the consumer decision making process for personal computer purchases, would focus groups or depth interviews be more useful? Explain.

2. How can Dell use social media to conduct qualitative research?