Dell began as the vision of Michael Dell. The company began in 1984 with a simple business concept to build computers to order and to sell directly to customers (Thompson and Gamble C-132).
             Dell has a history of achieving double-digit increases in annual sales. To maintain this growth, Dell is faced with many challenges due to the constant changes in the general environment, in the industry, in maintaining it's competitive advantage, and lastly using objective analysis to ascertain it's strength's, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
             The computer industry has benefited from the explosion of home computer usage. According to the US Census Bureau, computer usage has increased from 8.2% in 1984 to a current level of 51% as of August 2000 (appendix A and B). Internet usage is at an all time high of 41% (appendix A). In the business sector, small and large businesses are constantly upgrading their systems in response to an increasingly suave customer.
             Rapid technology and the computer industry complement each other. As the demand for faster, efficient, and lower cost computers in the home market increase, this partnership will steadily increase. This phenomenon is echoed in the business sector where the server is king and Dell has responded with an entry into the server, storage, and networking equipment market (Pletz).
             Prior to 9/11, the healthy economy provided an outlook of unbounded growth potential, however since that time the US economy has mirrored the uncertainty of the nation. In addition, the US and European computer industry has entered into a maturity stage and Dell has responded by offering lower priced computers and increasing its advertising budget (Thompson and Gamble C-159).
             In the US, the overall trend towards increased home/business computer and Internet usage has directly contributed to success the direct sales strategy at Dell. However this strategy faces several obstacles in the...