Why Our Company Should Adopt a Direct Marketing System

Our company, Duetsche computers, has been using retail marketing since its inception in 1985. We want to thank you all the retailers for the commitment you have shown to our company for all that time, to make it a leading supplier of computers and accessories. As you all know, the global market is changing very fast and for us to keep up with our competitors, we need to make several changes. We began by changing our technology and installed more efficient production machine. However, this has not helped to keep us ahead of our competitors. There are so many companies that are eating slowly into our market segment. This is why the company commissioned a research on our marketing strategy, comparing it with the global trend and we have found that we need to change it. From the result that we gathered in our research, most companies have preferred direct marketing as compared to retail marketing. It has come to our realization that we need to know our business well since we know our competitors. Direct marketing is the answer to modern marketing. It is not that we want to sideline our retailers who have supported us for all that time but it’s because we have to answer to the market needs. Marketing is becoming more direct, highly focused and interactive. Direct marketing is more personalized and aimed at individual markets rather than to the mass i.e. aimed at micro markets, who are the customers. According to Andrew R. et al. (2006), direct marketing remains the most effective channel for providing customers with personalized marketing that they prefer. We have found retail marketing very costly to us, and in the end we have been passing that cost to the consumers. This cost is increased by the inventory cost and ware housing cost. We have not been fixing prices for our electronic products and most of you have been selling at different prices. This has placed us at a disadvantage since competing companies sell their products at a uniform price throughout the country. We have also found that, most companies are making the product to consumer specification and that is the direction we want to take. We want to start making customized items as per the customer specification.   We have found it necessary to adopt a production model bases on the model of ‘Just-in-time, build-to-order’ as put forward by James Fulkerson (2003) of Dell Company – United States. This will help us to include new technology to orders placed by the customers. However, we are not to get into marketing alone. We want you to partner with us. We want you to move from you shops and establish a web-based shop. In turn we are going to establish a highly efficient sales team in our marketing department. You shall do the advertising of the product and then customers shall make orders to you. However we shall also partner in advertisement but for us at the company level and you at the distributor level.   The customers shall place order to you and you shall forward your order to the company with the required specification.   We can guarantee to you that, your orders shall be ready with the first five days of placing. The customer should have the orders delivered within the first 7 to 10 days. You shall be paid 8% commission for every delivery you make. This is surely a better method of improving our company sales and in advance your business sales. However it needs all of us to start working serious to maintain the market segment that we have acquired and that is a sure way to move about it. References Andrew, R., Dale, M., William, J. and Lind, T. (2006). Direct marketing in action: Cutting edge strategies. Fulkerson, J. (2003). Hewlett-Packard Saves U.S. $1.27 Million by Streamlining Online Sales Guide Production on 9th November 2007. Woodgrange Technologies Ltd. (2005). Businesses case study. Retrieved from, http://www.business2000.ie/cases/cases_8th/case1.htm   on 9th November, 2007.