Monday October 26, 9:01 am Eastern Time
Company Press Release
IBM Most Improved Desktop & Server
Vendor in TBR 3Q Customer Satisfaction
Ratings
Dell's Lead in Notebook Satisfaction Ratings
Narrows in Increasingly Competitive Market
HAMPTON, N.H.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 26, 1998-- Based on the results of Technology Business
Research's (www.tbri.com) 3rd Quarter Corporate IT Buying Behavior and Customer Satisfaction Study,
conducted with 278 F1000 IT Managers, Dell's (Nasdaq:DELL - news) leading customer satisfaction
position is eroding due to marked improvements by key competitors. The table below illustrates the
narrowing of Dell's scoring lead in the notebook arena, in particular, and the impressive gains in
customer satisfaction made by IBM (NYSE:IBM - news) across all form factors and Compaq
(NYSE:CPQ - news) in the notebook market.
-0-
2Q Score 3Q Score % Change
Notebooks(a):
Compaq 71.68 79.09 10.30%
Dell 84.05 84.71 0.8%
IBM 77.14 82.82 7.40%
Toshiba 72.79 76.37 4.90%
Intel Servers:
Compaq 82.65 85.85 3.90%
Dell 85.43 87.44 2.30%
Hewlett-Packard 84.97 85.87 1.10%
IBM 80.79 84.71 4.90%
Desktops:
Compaq 79.92 79.96 0%
Dell 83.91 86.20 2.70%
Gateway 78.72 80.03 1.60%
Hewlett-Packard 80.65 83.35 3.30%
IBM 76.60 82.27 7.40%
(a) 3Q notebook satisfaction scores adjusted for comparison
purposes with 2Q ratings.
Notebooks:
IBM, whose overall score has increased by a margin of 7% over the previous quarter, regained
significant service and support ground and continues its record of strong hardware reliability. IBM's
scores exceeded Dell's for technical support response, global support, and repair time. While Compaq's
notebook satisfaction score increased by 10% over the previous quarter, customers continue to indicate
there are problems with hardware reliability, price/performance, cost of ownership, and volume
discounting. Toshiba continues to fall short of its customers' expectations for product availability,
support, and volume discounting.
Dell continues to be perceived as the best all around notebook vendor, with strengths in
delivery/availability, set-up, long-term reliability, pricing, and volume discounting. Clearly, Dell has made
significant inroads into the corporate notebook marketplace, with an increasing market share from
quarter to quarter. In fact, among companies that switched notebook vendors in the past 12 months,
Dell was added by a 20 to 1 margin over companies that reported having replaced Dell.
Newly included this quarter, due to increased sample sizes are Gateway (NYSE:GTW - news) and
Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HWP - news). HP's notebooks virtually tie with IBM's satisfaction score.
Intel Servers:
In the Intel Server segment, the four primary vendors' satisfaction scores continue to be very
competitive, with a nominal 3% difference in score between the top and bottom vendors. Dell customers
tend to focus on pricing issues, while those of Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, and IBM are more influenced
by reliability and hardware performance. Compaq's and IBM's weaknesses include out of box quality and
price/performance while Hewlett-Packard's customers cite price/performance and volume discounts.
Hewlett-Packard strengths include out of box quality, technical support response, and performance.
Desktops:
Dell's satisfaction score continues to outrank IBM by a significant margin. However, IBM's score
increased by 7% over the previous quarter, the greatest margin of improvement observed among the
desktop vendors in the study. IBM's scores improved across all attribute areas except for hardware
performance, volume discounts, and delivery, where IBM's score decreased over the second quarter.
Dell's strengths cross all attribute areas save support, where customers score Dell average against the
competition. Volume discounting, in particular, is a Dell competitive strength area. While Dell and
Gateway customers are primarily driven by pricing issues, Hewlett-Packard customers are most
influenced by price and support, Compaq's by support and reliability, and IBM's by reliability and
hardware performance.
These results are contained in TBR's seventh consecutive quarterly Corporate IT Buying Behavior and
Customer Satisfaction Study. The third quarter study represents an installed base of approximately 2.2
million systems and planned purchases of 625,000 systems over the next 12 months. The report is
based on interviews with MIS/IT managers at 278 large U.S. corporations, over half of whom internally
track customer/user satisfaction feedback. For vendors, distributors, large end users and the investment
community, this program has become the preeminent tactical tool for monitoring customer satisfaction
from quarter to quarter. A customer satisfaction research program subscription, consisting of four
quarterly reports, is available for $4,950 annually to interested parties through the contacts listed below. |
