The boom in information for consumers has also severely weakened middle-market firms. In the past, these companies were able to charge a premium price because their brands were taken as signals of reasonable quality and reliability. Today, consumers don’t need to rely on shorthand: they have Consumer Reports and J. D. Power, CNET and Amazon’s user ratings, and so on, which have made it easier to gauge differences in quality accurately. The result is that brands matter less: a recent Nielsen survey found that more than sixty per cent of consumers think that stores’ generic products are equal in quality to brand-name ones. In effect, the more information people have, the tighter the relationship between quality and price: if you can deliver a product or service that is qualitatively better, you can charge top dollar. But if you can’t deliver the quality you can’t get the price.
HT Peter Gordon
I think:
Consumer self selection on the Internet. Next year consumers will begin directing transportation with key strokes on their home computers. Cars will form convoys automatically. Idle time between consumer and inventory narrows and no vendor can risk managing it, consumers self manage transportation. We have to treat the technology as if it has a mind of its own.
No comments:
Post a Comment