Jan 04

See, consumers aren’t sheep!

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Once in a while I’m reminded that despite all the attempts, money spent, and savvvy marketing that big companies can muster, consumers will often do the right thing and not just follow the herd.  I contemplate 3 current examples that are striking.

  1. Blu-ray vs HD-DVD:  I thought I was in the minority, in that I wasn’t going to budge and buy one of these two competing formats until they sorted it out and didn’t force me to buy both!  Some movies I love are on HD-DVD, while others are on Blu-Ray, well, sorry gang, I’m not buying 2 different players and I won’t start digging in deep with one, to find out that I picked the wrong horse.  Now, don’t get me wrong, the technology is great and I am picking a horse – Blu-Ray all the way.  But until Blu-ray becomes truly dominant will I make the investment.  I feared consumers would just pick one that was lower priced or had the better incentives to buy one, but to my pleasant surprise, most consumers have wielded the same middle finger I have.  Now, they have sold almost a million combined players, but that really means squat here.  They are looking to move the mass population to these new formats, to save their revenue streams.  There’s a slow down now, consumers are buying less DVDs, and this is the next great hope, but they aren’t getting it done.
  2. Vista – Man, Vista stinks for the most part.  And Microsoft should have learned, people will not just automatically upgrade!  And people aren’t!  Vista just doesn’t offer that much and pretty much demands a new souped-up PC, PASS!  XP works just great, on 3-4 year old hardware.. we’ll all sit this one out.
  3. CD’s/DRM – Man, the music industry is as dense as a diamond.  Consumers are done buying CD’s – their sales just dropped another 10% in 2007.  They tried to cozy up to Steve Jobs & Apple and now found out they have been marginalized by the fruit bearing friendly cultish company.  As a result, consumers still hate DRM, are buying less music and Apple now holds all the cards, with the iPod and iTunes.  So, can they the genie back in the bottle?  Not sure.

written by admin

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