Founded in 1984, Dell is a company that produces and sells different technology devices, mainly computers (Dell 2017a). It focuses on creating a strong relationship with its customers and on providing better-quality services (Anshu 2011; Bashin 2016). After an in depth research about the company, both from marketers and a consumer’s perspective, it seems Dell is aiming to achieve this goals through marketing and CSR. However, those two elements are not supplementing, but complementing each other.
As Karen Quintos, Dell’s Chief Customer Officer (CCO), (Dell 2017b) stated in an interview “…CSR is not a marketing strategy–it’s a tool for building a better business.” (Neisser 2016). Therefore, CSR is not part of Dell’s marketing strategy, but it represents a way of highlighting the company’s main goals of using technology to empower people to find solutions to problems, discover new things and progress society globally (Neisser 2016). More exactly, it is due to their customers
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Therefore, it might be argued if Dell is doing more CSM than CSR or those two, together with the other marketing strategies, complement each other.
Regarding the marketing element, Quintos (cited in Abramovich 2014) states that “Marketing the company’s internal digital transformation gives an opportunity to serve as best practice for the industry and our customers.” In other words, Dell’s marketing goes hand in hand with the IT resources which enable Dell to keep up with its customers’ fast changing trends (Quintos cited in Abramovich 2014). Relevant examples are Dell’s marketing campaigns such as "Beginnings”, “What Lives Inside” that show the interaction between people and technology, the innovation of the digital world as well as Dell’s involvement in all of this.
To put I differently, launched in 2015, the campaign “Future ready” consists of three related ads (“Beat Again”, “The night before” and “First Day Back”) that show the story of a girl in need of a heart transplant and the people involved in her path to recovery (Maddox 2015; Maddox 2016). Throughout the videos, Dell technologies’ involvement is constantly mentioned and shown (holograms, smart watches, cloud storages, 3D menus) as well as its big and fundamental impact that it can make on people’s lives (Maddox 2015; Maddox 2016). Beside the idea of identification and emotion amongst human beings found in need, the message of the campaign is that Dell is ready to provide business from different areas (in the ad, for example, it helps the health and education industries) with the necessary technologies to progress towards the future (Maddox 2015; Maddox 2016). Moreover, the above example shows Dell’s use of storytelling, which is considered a marketing way of drawing customer’s attention and according to Abramovich (2014), a shift “from a “sell” mentality to a “tell” mentality” in marketing (Pulizzi 2012; Quintos cited in Abramovich 2014).
As has been noted, Dell’s CSR is big and constantly developing in order to meet and satisfy customer’s needs and so is its marketing. Even though the CCO stated that “…CSR is not a marketing strategy…” (Neisser 2016), they still run into one another (more or less intended by the company) because Dell focuses on behavioural change, attitude known us Corporate Social Marketing (CSM) (Kotler and Lee 2005a). A relevant example of Dell’s corporate social marketing is the fact that it allowed its customers to return their used printers free of charge which was an attempt to encourage recycling (Kotler and Lee 2005a; Caneva 2015). Kotler and Lee (2005b, p. 94) consider that CSM is the best way to support your “marketing goals and objectives, including brand positioning and preference, market development, and increased sales”.
All in all, Dell tries to achieve its goals of building a great relationship with its customers and provide them with great services. This is due to its marketing strategies that include more and more the “human element” (storytelling), to its development of technologies in an innovative and environmental-friendly way and its general customer oriented view (see figure below). In the end, it is the consumers and marketers that have the final word. They are the ones who will decide whether or not Dell has or will be achieving these goals and the way its marketing strategies, CSM and CSR support the company in achieving them, or, on the contrary, consider that everything is just about marketing. After all, have you heard about Dell’s CSR or CSM before?
that Dell seeks to constantly improve and create a better digital future for them and the world they live in (Dell 2016).
According to their website, Dell’s CSR is highly and widely developed (Dell 2017c). It covers many areas which divide into sub-sections that more or less provide a lot of information or more documents related to the topic (Dell 2017c). However, this is just “Dell’s perspective” of their CSR which could or not be in fact just “greenwashing”, considered by Aggarwal and Kadyan (2014, p.61) “the darker side of CSR” (UCLA 2014). Some sources stated along time that Dell is, indeed, trying to be environmental friendly and understands CSR’s importance to its consumers (Arthur 2008; Dudovskiy 2015; Ievseieva 2016). On the contrary, others stated that its CSR ideas are poor or just a method to distract their customers from what they should actually be doing, implying, therefore, their use of greenwashing (Orfano 2010; Pearse 2012). Comparing those pro and against findings, it seems Dell might have greenwashed in the past, but now, as sources from the past 2 years claim, it is on the right track.
