Strategy Implementation Assignment

Dropbox: “It Just Works”

Q) Imagine at the time Dropbox was launched, Google decided to target the opportunity that Houston has
identified. What should be the response of Dropbox?

Answer: The first aspect to look upon would be the capital and size of the company. Google which has a huge repository
of money could use it as a high user platform which would allow Google to be a tough competitor of Dropbox. So
Dropbox should approach Google’s all time rival company Microsoft so that the Dropbox is also backed with adequate
and sufficient capital.

Concerning with the data space for storing the data Google could have increased their free limit of 15GB to 30GB since
its competitor is just providing 2GB of storage data for free. Since Dropbox is currently providing with just 13.33% free
storage space against Google Drive which is providing with 15GB so this would impact the Dropbox to a huge extent.
In order to retain the existing customers, Dropbox should increase its limit of free storage by venturing with Microsoft’s
cloud based storage service.

With their high knowledge in the domains of IT market and Technology they could even add new features with the latest
being Google Photos. These factors could have made their product even more attractive for customers than Dropbox.
To counter this Dropbox could merge with or tie up with Microsoft to provide them with IT Market and Technology.

One of the problem they might have encountered at that point of time was the challenge to convince the customers that
the data is safe with them and in their servers. This is the place where both Google and Dropbox would be highly judged
but since Google being a large giant won’t find any difficulty which Dropbox might face.

Google could look upon would be the comfort and user friendly nature of Google Drive which could be accessed directly
from the user’s email. Even the files and folders can be organised directly from the mail itself without opening the drive.
Similar to this Dropbox can tie with Outlook and provide the users with such extra benefits.

To give an extra benefit Google even started with Google Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Forms etc., and same gets synced
directly in the users Google Drive. This allows the users not to save the data since it gets saved automatically in the
user’s Google Dive. Similar to what Google did Dropbox would start the same by bringing Microsoft into the picture
where the users of MS Office and Outlook would get the benefits.

Google Drive also did the same strategy whereby the basic strategy is free of charge but for the premium the customer
need to pay for it. But Google Drive differed from Dropbox when it gives a lower price than Dropbox for premium. For
example, customer was paying for premium plans for both Google Drive and Dropbox. Both 100GB plans, $1.99 a
month for Google drive and $9.99 a month for Dropbox. This approach by offering the lowest price is the best decision
because we all know that customer like a lower price for the same quality. But in September 2004, Dropbox in an
aggressive move has dropped its prices to match Google Drive, now offering 1TB for $10 because Dropbox realized
that lower pricing strategy was so successful to attract customers.

Submitted To: Prof. Veeresh Sharma

Submitted By: ADARSH DALMIA
Section: “C”
Reg. No.: 18PGDM116