Gullible Consumers Easily Swayed By Meaningless Tech Specs
from the oooooh,-1.21-jigawatts!! dept
I imagine this won't come as a huge surprise to many of you, but it appears that we're all influenced by the presence of tech specs on a product -- even if those specs are somewhat meaningless. A variety of separate studies showed that people would usually purchase the product with "more" specs, even if they were meaningless. One of the tests even had people create their own tech specs based on their usage, and they were still more influenced by the specs than the actual usage. Apparently, we need to get busy adding more "tech specs" to our products around here...
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Filed Under: gullible, influence, tech specs
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Swayed?
Imagine a PC being sold, sitting next to a competitor. Without specs, one can't tell them apart?
Now there are those people who swoon over the "best" when it comes to specs, but these people don't have a clue to realize their purchase becomes obsolete within a year. But hey, if they're willing to pay $1000 for a Blu-Ray player, so be it. I'm sure Samsung loves these types of consumers.
They just don't like me. I wait for the price drops. I stopped buying "new" decades ago after being burned by Beta vs. VHS (I bought Beta, er, because of the specs).
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Re: Swayed?
Why do you always do this? You claim the article posted is wrong, then post exactly what the article is saying as a counter argument. Is English a second language, or are you running this through a translator?
On topic:
Not all "specs" are meaningful. Also, sometimes they get fudged. For example, in storage they tend to say things like "550GB" Hard Drives, even though they are 512 GB. They decide to make 1GB = 1000MB instead of 1024MB. Then people get angry when "their computer" only recognizes 512 GB.
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Re: Re: Swayed?
I did? Give me a second to re-read my post.
Nope. Didn't say it was wrong. Just said I wouldn't have used the word "sway".
But if you want me to conclude the statement: "Swayed isn't the word I'd use as 'Dupe" is much better."
I just didn't want to open that can of worms.
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Re: Swayed?
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Report doesn't say much
Specs DO mean a lot, but also have to be taken into account w/ what you will be doing w/ the product. But we are also talking about regular consumers here, not consumers who research the products for months ahead of time before purchasing them. I did 3 months of research before buying my latest DSLR, and I didn't buy the one w/ the best specs. I bought the one w/ the specs that fit what I'd be doing w/ the camera.
Most people buy a digital camera according to how large the Megapixels are, when it's actually the optics that really control how good the picture comes out. If you have 15 megapixels and lousy optics.. you're going to get a very large crappy picture. But to most uninformed consumers, bigger is better.
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Personaly I look at specs that would be worthless to most people, IE I am looking for less than 4ms response rate on my HD LCD TV so I can run computer games on it without seeing the screen shudder when you get up to the laggy 8ms and greater response speeds.
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I always tell people
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Re: I always tell people
I like to go into a best buy or wherever and look clueless when selecting hardware or whatever, then after I get them to say a few "specs" about the product, I then question them on the important things and they are all dumbfounded, i love it!
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Re: Re: I always tell people
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Re: Re: Re: I always tell people
Please. When I started working (at 16 and making minimum wage, no less) I made sure that I knew what the hell I was talking about and if I didn't know something, I found out rather than lying to the customer's face and calling it a night.
There's no excuse for ignorance regardless of your age and income. Ever notice that the best workers, young and old, are the ones that know what they're doing and don't make excuses for their own failings? That's no coincidence, believe me.
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Salesmen
Q: How are computer salesmen different from used car salesmen?
A: The car salemen know when they are lying.
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Google is your friend
Some of the products in the article were kind of laughable: sesame oil - I look for 'Toasted'; bath towels - 100% cotton for me; I buy cameras and cell phones more by brand name than anything else.
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Huh
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Now with ..
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