Like desktops, the key factor that occupies the CIO’s mind during the purchase process for notebooks is the product itself and the CIO is also influenced by the pre-sales and marketing efforts of the vendors. And the clichй continues, even when rephrased it would still mean that competition is very tough. IBM retains the top position in this category but the margin is thin.

And very close behind IBM is the HP-Compaq combine, which have dislodged Toshiba from the second spot. Again the difference in the satisfaction scores is thin. Incidentally, HP did feature last year and Compaq actually occupied the third spot. Toshiba now stands a notch lower at the third position.

The CIO despite placing the least importance on the price and commercial terms offered incidentally is the least satisfied with this parameter. A surprising development from last year is that the importance placed on pre-sales and marketing from occupying a position of least importance is the second most important factor today. A plausible explanation is that rapidly changing technology is burying even the well-informed CIO under a mountain of information.

The CIO is inundated with numerous choices concerning products, applications, services and you name it. Able marketers with a firm grasp about the abilities and weaknesses of their products can help make life easy even for an informed customer. It is no coincidence then that the entire world is now talking about consultative selling. And, it is here that the marketing skills

bulwarked with the right product can make a difference. While the marketer will have little control in sustaining product differentiation, the value that they bring to the table will largely stem from the ability to retrofit existing products to tailor new solutions.

Toshiba’s number three position could largely be explained because of marginally lower-than-average satisfaction scores on two key parameters — product features and pre-sales and marketing. While product itself includes sub-parameters like reliability, performance, maintenance, ease-of-use and warranty replacement schemes; pre-sales and marketing includes sub-parameters like responsiveness to specific requirement, domain knowledge, proactiveness in understanding needs and quality of interaction.

However, Toshiba’s performance on the price-product parity and commercial terms offered beats the industry average but that hardly helps Toshiba’s cause for the CIO relatively does not place as much importance on this parameter.