Hewlett-Packard Development Company L.P. operates in an extremely competitive industry against the likes of Dell, IBM, Salesforce, Cisco and Oracle. This challenge is compounded by the fast-paced emergence of hardware and technologies. According to information published in the HP Corporate website as of 2014, the company develops and implements dynamic marketing strategies to confront these challenges.
Marketing its products and applications is a fundamental component of HP’s strategic plans according to the HP Corporate website as of June 2014. Mike Spanbauer, a principal analyst for enterprise networking and data center technology, wrote about it in a report for the Current Analysis Inc., website in 2012. It acknowledged HP emphasizes its ability to provide low-cost solutions for varying IT needs of customers across the global markets.
HP has distribution, reselling and strategic alliance agreements with more than 145,000 partners. The partners enroll in the PartnerOne program, a system that rewards reseller and channel partners according to their levels of participation in the company’s chain of marketing activities. In his 2012 HP assessment, Spanbauer wrote that the levels of participation range from technical and sales training to funding of co-marketing activities for upper level participants.
HP acknowledges it draws much of its competitive edge from product and technological innovations. Such products and technologies include server systems, personal computers and tablets, and software services. These products are organized into four major business segments comprising printing and personal systems, enterprise group, enterprise systems and software application.
A look at HPs website shows the company has integrated into it several social media channels. In an article published on the Marketing Week website in 2013, Lara O’Reilly notes that HP has a social strategy that seeks to engage customers through the creation of relevant content. O’Reilly wrote that the social strategy enables HP to relate its content to issues that are already trending in the social media platforms.
