Monday,
September 23, 2002
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Guest
Speak |
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Motivate through
straight talk
Patrick Morehead
Patrick Morehead, Vice President
Customer advocacy Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) |
CONSIDERING
all "evident" benefits offered by personal computing devices,
you might naturally assume that more persons would want to enrich their
lives with new technologies. Therefore, I’m surprised by the slowdown
in the technology adoption that many pundits are now blaming on the
economy.
But I believe that
conclusion misses a more fundamental reason. What if the rate of home
and business technology innovation is outpacing its relevance to many
consumers, leaving them to wonder if they even need the latest in
technology? At that point, are the "evident" benefits of
computing really so evident? I recently met the Global Consumer Advisory
Board, a highly respected group of consumer and small-business advocates
from Asia, Canada, Europe, Japan, Latin America, Mexico and the USA, to
explore this disconnect between technology innovation and adoption. We
drew a conclusion — A ‘technology gap’ indeed exists on a global
level. Here’s why: An average person using technology often faces an
unfamiliar vocabulary of acronyms and abstract hi-tech terms that he or
she doesn’t understand. When purchasing, setting up and even using
technology devices, this lack of understanding only serves to confuse,
paralyse and frustrate. Even worse, as technology continues to innovate,
the technology vocabulary constantly increases.
If people want to take
full advantage of these newer technologies, they are often required to
surrender personal information. That automatically raises concerns about
privacy and security in this personal data "trade-off." These
doubts only hold back the more widespread adoption of new products and
services, such as certain portals, media players, wireless computing
devices and e-commerce, which require the exchange of personal
information.
According to IDC’s
2001 consumer devices survey report, 41 per cent of respondents said
they do not own a PC because they have no need for one. This precisely
characterises the third issue causing the technology gap — the
inability on the part of the industry to properly convey the values and
benefits of new digital products or services.
The industry must
realise that the values and relevancies of technologies are different
for different people. Educational, cultural and geographic differences
among consumers obviously exist. Yet when designing, marketing and
supporting a product, the industry seems to take a one-size-fits-all
approach. Some may argue — and I would agree — that the need for
trust, simplicity and relevance in marketing technology products is
quite obvious. Yet so much of today’s technology is sold on the
features and not the benefits.
One line item in a
typical Sunday ad circular about a PC and the information presented read
as follows — "1.6 GHz, 256KB L2 cache, 64MB DDR SDRAM." Do
we really expect regular folks to buy a PC based on such gobbledygook?
Another good example is
that to understand wireless home networking, consumers need to know the
difference between Bluetooth, IEEE, 802.11a and 802.11b. The industry
has been talking to the same group of sophisticated consumers for 20
years. If you are a mainstream user of technology, it is difficult to
catch up and you have to be really motivated to invest the time and
money.
So where do we go from
here? How can we put the technology consumer back at the centre of the
technology discussion? How about starting by communicating in terms that
explain the real benefits that people will receive from their technology
investment. Letmotivate people with a reason to buy, targeted to solve
their unique needs rather than with some cool technology feature.
Consumers represent the most important factor in the technology food
chain. After all, they are the ones who will ultimately decide the
market success or failure of a technology.
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