SPSS Assignment

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HP: Using Marketing Research to Gain a Competitive Edge

The Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) is known worldwide for its printers, personal computers,

and related services. With Headquarters in Palo Alto, California, it has a global presence in the

fields of computing, printing, and digital imaging. It markets products such as printers, cameras,

and ink cartridges to households and small business. It also provides software and services

(www.hp.com). The company once catered primarily to engineering and medical markets but

spun off that line of business as Agilent Technologies in 1999.

Founded by Stanford graduates William Hewlett and David Packard in Palo Alto in 1934,

Hewlett and Packard started HP with an investment of $538. The company incorporated 15

years later and went public in 1957. Not until the 1960s and 1970s did HP recognize the market

for information technology products. As a consequence of meeting this need, HP introduced

the computer industry to Silicon Valley. At the time, products from Silicon Valley were limited

to calculators, converters, and semi-converters. In the 1980s, HP began to develop industrial

laser printers for desktops and prospered.

In the 1990s, HP expanded its computer-product line, which initially had been targeted at

university, research, and business customers, to consumers. Later in the decade, HP launched

hpshopping.com as an independent subsidiary to sell online, direct to consumers; the store was

rebranded “HP Home & Home Office Store” in 2005. HP also grew through acquisitions, buying

Apollo Computer in 1989, Convex Computer in 1995, and Compaq in 2002. Compaq itself had

bought Tandem Computers in 1997 (which had been started by ex–HP employees) and Digital

Equipment Corporation in 1998. Following this strategy, HP became a major player in desktops,

laptops, and servers for many different markets.

HP posted $91.7 billion in annual revenue in 2006 compared to $91.4 billion for IBM, making it

the world’s largest technology vendor in terms of sales. In October 2006, HP gained the number

one ranking in worldwide personal computer shipments, surpassing rival Dell. The gap between

HP and Dell widened substantially at the end of 2006, with HP taking a near 3.5 percent market

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share lead. In 2007 the revenue was $104 billion, making HP the first IT company in history to

report revenues exceeding $100 billion. HP posted $114.6 billion in annual revenue in 2009

continuing its growth trajectory.

On October 6, 2014, Hewlett-Packard announced plans to split the PC and printers business

from its enterprise products and services business. The split closed on November 1, 2015,

resulting in two publicly traded companies: HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. As of 2018,

HP is a global technology company with a vision to create technology that makes life better for

everyone, everywhere—every person, every organization, and every community around the

globe. Its mission is captured in its slogan, “Keep reinventing.” HP Inc. provides products,

technologies, software, solutions and services to individual consumers, small and medium-sized

businesses and large enterprises, including customers in the government, health and education

sectors.

HP identified that the technical trials that customers often face crop up at the most unexpected

and inconvenient times in the daily course of business. Equipment and applications are going to

break down, most often right when a critical project is due or while the customer is on the

road. The customer’s first line of action is usually to call in to the support helpdesk or perhaps

research the problem online. HP Services addresses the customer’s pain points in these

situations by understanding the critical role support plays and how quickly the customer needs

resolution. HP’s award-winning support organization is dedicated to getting the customer up

and running as quickly as possible and preventing future problems so companies can continue

to meet their business deliverables. In fact, HP Services customer support organization is

becoming increasingly recognized as a leader.

As early as 2004, the industry acknowledged HP’s commitment to customer satisfaction with

more than seven honors and awards. HP earned the highest overall rating from its customers in

a Computerworld/InterUnity Group Inc. survey of nearly 1,200 information technology

managers and professionals. In this study, customers gave HP the top satisfaction marks in six

of eight categories, including meeting customer expectations, contributing to customer

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profitability, product quality, product reliability, and licensing policies. Customer satisfaction

has continued to rate high through 2018. Given its commitment to customer service and

satisfaction, HP conducted a survey of recent purchasers of HP PCs and notebooks. HP wants to

understand how its consumers use their HP computers. It also wants to understand the level of

satisfaction that consumers are deriving from HP’s products. HP wants to estimate the

probability that customers will be repeat buyers and whether current customers will

recommend HP to their friends and family. Finally, HP wants to determine if there is any

correlation on any of these identified usage factors and the underlying demographic

characteristics of its customers. The questionnaire that was used is provided here; the

associated data collected can be downloaded from the Web site for this book.

HP Survey Questions (Page 4 …)

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