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Technology Stocks : DELL: Facts, Stats, News and Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jbn3 who wrote (142)	10/1/1998 8:39:00 AM
From: Gabriel008	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 335

PC repurchase loyalty from ZD Market Intelligence; The Winnah and Still Champeen....... Is Dell. Lots of folks talk about loyalty among PC purchasers, but at ZD Market Intelligence we look at sites that have 50% or more of one vendor's product installed, and then see how they behave when they make new purchases. By conducting our loyalty study this way we know the location has some commitment to the incumbent vendor and know there is some sort of relationship which allowed the vendor to achieve more than a 50% account share. We've been talking about this here at InfoBeads Insider for some time. It's been a dog fight some months, but one of the things that is generally clear is that Dell does very well. In fact, it seems that most months they have the highest repurchase loyalty. However, before we can conclude Dell the winner, we need to take a closer look. It looks to me like Compaq is starting to chase Dell's repurchase level, and the company has been on quite an upswing in loyalty over the last few months. Maybe it's just fate that Dell and Compaq seem to go head-to-head, or maybe it's just great execution on both of their parts? Among the other vendors, there are a couple of trends worth noting. First, Gateway manages to have among the most steady repurchase rate. The fact that this repurchase rate is well above 50% is important. Clearly their business model is working well for them. IBM has also been turning in a pretty good showing of late. While their overall levels are not nearly what they should be, the trend is improving. Since IBM has never done well based on this metric, this is good news. And it looks like HP is the only one of the majors that is slipping significantly. Given recent changes in their field organization with Dick Watts leaving, this statistic may tumble further. Because of their recent showing, it's surely worth looking a bit deeper into Compaq's gains. Compaq's gains are significant, and while they've done a good job limiting the opportunities for Dell, HP, and IBM, the big news is that they've been able to get the purchases back from the "other" category. Part of this is the weakness that firms like AST and Acer are having, but in addition to this, Compaq's product line is much better positioned on the low-end for customers so that many of the price-oriented deals in small and medium-sized accounts are now going Compaq's way. Purchasing is really starting to heat up for the fourth quarter, so we'll be watching to see who keeps their loyalties as the volumes increase. Right here at InfoBead Insider.