Many products and services are marketed to an extent where its capabilities are actually falsely overstated.  For example, some may believe that the Slap Chop, a product that claims to chop vegetables, fruits, and much more quickly and easily is a waste of money.  In addition to the Slap Chop, various exercise machines, such as the Thigh Master have been marketed in such a way that grabs the target market’s attention.  However, for a large portion of the cases, these marketing strategies that overstate the product result in disappointment.

This theory is no different when it comes to products which may be more well-known than the Slap Chop, or Thigh Master.  Apple has recently released Siri: a voice recognition software.  Of the 2000 apple consumers questioned in America, 46% of consumers said that Siri’s voice recognition capabilities were oversold.  Alternatively, nearly 44% of these same consumers stated that the voice recognition software was “hit or miss”, “not very good”, or “bad”.

This mismatch of consumer expectations, and marketing strategy led to a law suit being filed against Apple’s Siri in March of 2012.  The suit claims that “Through its nationwide multimedia campaign, Apple disseminates false and deceptive representations regarding the functionality of the Siri feature” (Los Angeles Times).  In many of Apple’s Siri commercials, this feature shows Siri making appointments and locating various restaurants.  It even goes so far as showing consumers using Siri to learn guitar chords!

Evidently, the gap between what is advertised, and what the reality of the product is, causes an uproar with goods such as Apple’s Siri.  One may argue that if company’s do not market their product well enough, demand will drop, therefore reducing the company’s revenue.  On the other hand, with over exaggerated advertising, consumers may start to lose trust in the company, therefore also dropping demand.

It is essentially up to the company to decide on how, and in which ways they would like to market their product based on reputability, how elastic the good is, and how far from the truth their advertising really is.

Link to the Los Angeles Times article on the lawuit:

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/28/business/la-fi-tn-apple-iphone-siri-class-action-lawsuit-20120328