I recently read Lucas Palovic’s blog about Consumer Choice in which he focuses on how companies like Dell that are taking on a winning strategy of focusing on the changing demands of their consumers. I am in complete agreement with his analysis on the subject.
To analyze further I believe that this is going to continue to be the trend in many product categories. The best way to sustain growth and maintain (and perhaps even steal) market share is by finding new ways to meat consumer needs. Particularly in categories as complex as computers, marketers are going to need to keep up with increasing demands and expectations of their consumers who may not even know what the features truly represent. This could become frustrating for them but they need to be able to simplify their products for the consumers to get the most value from them. Consumers want benefits and it is the job of marketers to provide the features that will suffice.
I think more and more companies are going take on this micromarketing approach and customize based on the benefits – and not the features – that consumers want. Personally, I have no clue what all these big long words for computer features mean. And I don’t think I’m alone. In my computer, I want it to be fast, have lots of memory and be able to run the applications for me to do my homework -I don’t know the jargon for what does this. Thats the manufacturers job.