Customers Know Best

Those of us in retail and consumer marketing are often confronted with this truism. And while consumers are the ones plunking down their hard earned money on the latest (or cheapest) tech gadget, we in the business often think we know what the consumer wants better than the consumer does. Sometimes we are right, and then sometimes we are wrong. And the best companies move to take advantage of that customer feedback and can accept that sometimes their initial marketing or sales tactics missed the mark.
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SMBs Looking To Upgrade

A couple of months ago we talked about some distribution and reseller sales statistics which indicated that, at least as we exited 2009 sales growth had begun to pickup in the SMB focused channels that NPD tracks besides retail. As we are now through the first few months of 2010 we have seen this trend continue, in both our Distributor Track and our Commercial Reseller Tracking services. In both, revenue is tracking towards 2008 levels and showing substantial revenue growth over the depressed levels of 2009.
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I Don’t Trust Digital Stuff

That sentiment is not mine, but it is one that comes through loud and clear from NPD’s latest Online Software Purchasing Report. And while it may be a stretch, these findings may also offer us some insight into consumers’ acceptance of owning virtual content going forward. Consumers are clearly used to buying (and renting) things digitally, iTunes is the largest music store in the U.S. according to NPD, and Netflix streaming is undeniably rocketing in popularity as it is incorporated into more and more devices. But strangely it always feels that computer software remains behind the adoption curve. Sometimes it’s bandwidth, sometimes it’s security, sometimes it’s awareness (or just plain interest), and sometimes it’s just comfort; but consumers desire to download real productivity software is clearly behind where they are in getting their other virtual content.

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