Hi Kemble! Dell knows the customer! :)Leigh
zdnet.com
A Web lesson: Know your customers
By Eric Lundquist
April 10, 2000 9:00 AM ET
A couple of items you might have missed if you couldn't get beyond the Microsoft/DOJ headlines last week:
The Web-to-consumer craze that drew millions of venture dollars and promises of millions more in stock options is turning out to be merely crazy. Once, if you were not on the consumer-Web bandwagon, you were hopelessly uncool, unhip and clearly unaware of where the world was headed. And many of these sites are still cool and hip?at least until the local ISP pulls the plug.
Here's what I think is happening. The close circle of venture capitalists, second- and third-level funding organizations, and Web execs spent a great deal of time convincing one another what a great idea they had and what a great bunch of Web visionaries they all were. They forgot to ask consumers if they would buy their dog food, sporting goods, health care stuff and so on via the Web. The answer would have surprised them.
There is a great lesson here for business-to-business marketing: Make sure you know your business customer. Can anyone differentiate among the 900 Web-based commodity exchanges out there? It's also a great lesson and opportunity for local brick-and-mortar retailers to build real Web relationships with customers. Not everyone wants to sit at home shopping online, but many people would like to know what is available at their local stores before they venture out.
Dell and Gateway are morphing once again. In the same sense that an operating system makes sense only if the applications that run on it are useful, both companies are pushing deeper into the uses of all those systems they've been selling. Dell has dived into being an Internet infrastructure provider through a host of alliances. This is a case where first the Web changed the way the company sold its products, then the experience with using the Web changed the products the company sells. It could be the first example of a vendor actually using its products before offering them to the public.
Gateway is selling a bunch of packages for music reproduction (or rip-off, depending on your stance), digital photography, money management and Web creation. Building application platforms makes a lot of sense for Gateway.
Wireless providers are pairing up and cranking up production. Ubiquitous wireless communication has been promised more often than a Red Sox World Series championship. But this time around, the technology, products, marketing and demand all seem to be coming into sync. BellSouth and SBC Communications are the latest giants to team up to offer expanded wireless services.
Wireless phone carriers bet they can leverage what they have learned from wireless voice transmission to capture wireless data transmission. Wireless data companies bet they can move faster without legacy baggage. Either way, rapid deployment of wireless will have a more immediate, greater impact on computing than any final resolution of the Microsoft/DOJ case.
Comments? Contact Eric Lundquist at eric_lundquist@zd.com. |
