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Technology Stocks : Compaq -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Roads End who wrote (33725)	10/2/1998 1:17:00 PM
From: Senator949	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 97611

Is anyone watching the tube? All the indices seemed to flatline at 1:00PM. What's Rubin got to say? Robin

To: Roads End who wrote (33725)	10/2/1998 1:27:00 PM
From: John Koligman	Respond to of 97611

HWP also getting into the 'direct' game.... John HP expands direct sales offerings By Ephraim Schwartz and David Pendery InfoWorld Electric Posted at 6:44 PM PT, Oct 1, 1998 Hewlett-Packard confirmed on Thursday that it will expand the scope of its online HP Shopping Village to include mid-priced and high-end Pavilion PCs and monitors. Up until now, the company sold only refurbished models. HP notified its retail channel including such chains as Circuit City, CompUSA, Office Depot, and Staples of the move earlier this week. The move comes after the results of recent research of U.S. consumer buying habits indicate 20 percent of high-tech purchases are made directly from the manufacturer, according to Susan Murdy, director of Strategic Communications for Consumer Products at HP, in San Diego. "HP Shopping Village enables us to reach this particular segment and reduce the number of sales we are currently losing to this segment," Murdy said. The move was not unexpected. In July, HP officials said that the company would do what was necessary to satisfy the needs of all of its customers, consumer as well as commercial. "You can't ignore what Dell has done," said Lew Platt, chairman, president, and CEO of HP. "Customers like Dell's high touch model." According to an HP representative, the high touch model referred to by Platt means that Hewlett-Packard will assume a direct relationship with certain customers and become the primary interface, no matter what method of distribution and delivery are used. However, Platt would not identify any particular customer segment that wants a "high touch" relationship with HP. "It's impossible to generalize, I could give you a list of names of really large customers who have said to HP, 'Either do business with us directly or you are not going to do business with us,'" Platt said. "You can't take any particular size of customer and say, 'this size customer wants to go direct, and that size wants the channel." One former retailer said that for retailers, this kind of news no longer rises above being an annoyance. "It is annoying that your partners are also your competitors, but that is just the facts of life," said Steve Dukker, former senior vice president of merchandising at Computer City responsible for both corporate and retail sales. According to Dukker, HP is just following the trend of all segments of the industry participating in every channel. He noted, with some irony, that Compaq now has configuration kiosks in retail outlets, thus in essence training the retailers' own customers how to buy directly. Hewlett-Packard Co., in Palo Alto, Calif., is at www.hp.com.