Consumer Business Positioning of PC Vendors
Differences in the consumer positioning of Tier 1 PC vendors revolve around their market focus and the strength of consumer interest and preference for their brands.
Some of these differences revolve around how closely each brand is associated (if at all) with entertainment and/or computer-mediated lifestyles, or if it is basically just evaluated on hardware features.
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Positioning with Consumers
Outside China, Lenovo falls into the latter category, and is seen as a straight-forward vendor of desktops and notebooks - this is similar to Toshiba’s positioning. While consumers understand these products come from trust-worthy vendors, neither the Lenovo nor the Toshiba brands have much emotional impact on consumers purchase decisions.
The PC brand in which consumers have the strongest emotion investment is undoubtably Apple and its Mac products.
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Historically, Sony has also been a high-impact consumer brand, though this has lessened somewhat in recent years. While Sony emphasizes lifestyle and entertainment in the marketing of its VAIO products, the company is not particularly strongly associated with PCs. Sony’s wider home entertainment product offerings (and the PlayStation 3) tend to dominate its positioning with consumers.
HP, with over 80,000 retail storefronts for the products of its Personal Systems Group (PSG) has the largest distribution infrastructure of all PC vendors. In running its “The Computer is Personal Again” campaign across more than 90 countries, HP is making a major investment in positioning its notebooks as Lifestyle products for both small business and consumers.
Dell recently said it wants to create “brand lust” in consumer markets, but outside the gaming market it is starting from perhaps the most un-cool, bargain basement image of all of the Tier 1 vendors. Dell is know for making cheap computers, and has not had a strong focus on consumers - 85% of its revenues come from its enterprise, government and business customers.
Acer (like Toshiba and Sony) has been making PCs which are stylish, rather than ‘cool’. Most of its massive sales growth has come from business, government, and education sales, though its recent acquisition of Gateway and Packard Bell gives it a major consumer presence, particularly in the Americas and Europe.
Continue to next section of this special report: PC Vendor Go-to-Market Strategies
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