Many vendors offer consumers multiple ways to buy their computers: online, by phone, and in-store.
Consumers prefer retail experiences when:
- They are undecided or open to several brand possibilities,
- Some guidance and advice would be welcome from retail assistants,
- They would like to touch and try-out a PC before buying it, and/or
- They want to buy the PC now and take it home themselves (perhaps as a gift or family purchase).
Having good physical market coverage through popular retail locations is therefore a key competitive factor in consumer PC markets.
Some vendors, such as HP, Acer (after its Gateway and Packard Bell acquisitions), and Toshiba, have good representation in major retailers, large networks of distributors and resellers, and good presence in countries such as China and India where smaller reseller shops are (currently) the normal places where families buy PCs.
These resellers are of mixed value when selling to consumers. While a number will be small family-owned stores happy to serve and sell to consumers, many resellers are focused on selling multiple units to businesses together with IT services (much more profitable than PC hardware sales). Others, particularly in developing markets, may be price-based outlets whose sales are mainly of white-label and second-tier PC brands as well as discontinued models.
To achieve growth in consumer markets vendors should have carefully developed retail distribution strategies, and need to understand and serve the needs of their retail channel partners just as much as their target consumers.
Continue to next section of this special report: PC Vendor Positioning |
