Dell's B2C vs. B2B: Observation and Application
Introduction
Michael Dell, who is the founder and CEO of the computer titan Dell, started the firm in 1984. From this time, the firm has been deemed by many as a success because of a basic practice: "selling computer system directly to customers where Dell could best understand consumer needs and efficiently provide the most effective computing solutions to meet such necessities" (Dell, 2007). Accomplishing this task is possible from the use of just-in-time (JIT) inventory and establishing supply chains, or value chains, which are a grouping of companies "who are increasingly coordinating activities through an extranet" (LearnThat, 2007) to service the customer, business, or government with a high-quality or low-cost product upon delivery. The purpose of this paper is to examine and detail the value chains for the business-to-consumer (B2C) and the business-to-business (B2B) relationship and relate the said findings to class materials.
B2C
As a consumer, when visiting the Dell website and selecting the appropriate hypertext markup language, various products for consumer use are apparent, from monitors to central processing units to printers and ink supplies. In a mock search and to narrow a direct value chain for analysis, the authoress chose the Dell XPS 420 with monitor, built for performance and productivity. The basic specifications from the Dell sight (2007) "include an Intel Core 2 Q6600 Quad-Core processor, a Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium operating system, a 3 GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667 MHz ? 4 DIMMS random access memory, the ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO video card, a 320GB2- 7200RPM/SATA 3.0 Gb/w-16MB Cache, a 20 inch Dell flat screen monitor, Adobe Elements ...