Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

For consumer electronics and cameras?

Hmm.

How about using video capability and image resolution as your second set? With possible variations such as direct load to Facebook; direct load to YouTube; direct load to a flat screen, high definition TV; in camera editing and off camera editing and special effects; facial recognition ability; auto focus, auto exposure, and auto image stabilization.

Naturally, these are all features ... HOWEVER, the practical upshot of these features is that they act as benefits to users who are seeking flexibility, functionality, ease of use, convenience, and superior end results in their use of technology.

So, stop thinking like a marketer and start thinking like
a consumer.

What would you, as a buyer and user of this kind of product, want to be able to DO or to ACCOMPLISH as a result of your USE of the product? Do you want to use a $200 camera with video capability to make a high definition movie? How do you want your use of the product to make you FEEL? Do you want to feel like a major Hollywood director?

At a press conference either shortly before or during the filming of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 1999, someone (I think it was George Lucas) made a prediction about the future of high definition video technology.

To film many of the sections of the movie, George Lucas borrowed at least one experimental, high-definition movie camera from Fuji. This camera was huge and was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. At the press conference it was speculated that within ten years (or maybe not even that long), it would be possible for a housewife to film and edit a high definition movie on a hand-held video camera and that the footage could then be edited on a laptop computer sitting on a kitchen table.

The reporters at the event laughed at him. The implication here was that the prediction was never going to happen.

Wrong.

For under $3,000 it's now possible to make motion picture quality movies with digital SLRs and a laptop computer. Add in a high speed Internet connection and sites such as Vimeo and YouTube and you have instant distribution roads to fuel demand at the box office or at the register.

When technology improves, ease of production increases
and its costs drop. As production costs fall, consumer pricing indexes follow suite. When retail prices fall, access gateways open, thereby fueling demand. Social proof then kicks in and demand increases.

Are you seeing a pattern here?

Buyers and users of high tech electronics want their use of
the technology to be easy, simple, and as intuitive as possible.

They want to be made to feel smart, talented, creative, able, intelligent, and popular.

When their use of the device (through the device's lack of ease of use) makes the user feel like an imbecile, the user feels ripped off and the value and share of mind of the brand nosedives.

Want to see sales drop like a stone? Make your devices expensive and difficult to use and then come out with a million different fixes that all add unnecessary layers of complication and frustration.

Food for thought? Good. Now, WITHOUT copying and pasting ANY of this as your own, put your thinking cap on and go and finish your paper.