Upgrade Sticker Shock?
March 20, 2006 by Jason Bean
Filed under Computers
Microsoft’s big marketing push for the launch of Vista will be centered around stickers. Specifically “Designed for Windows”, but two versions: basic and premium.
Microsoft will try to push retailers and manufacturers to encourage users to upgrade to the more profitable premium versions of the new Windows operating system.
The strategy may work to some degree, but not because of the stickers. Microsoft is encouraging retailers to highlight the advanced features of the OS, by cross-marketing it’s functionality with hardware that’s designed to take advantage of all the great features of the OS. The specific example the article uses is digital photography…
In many cases, however, retailers would be expected to change their store layouts. As an example, Block cited research indicating “digital photography is the biggest driver of PC upgrades today”.
“But when you walk into a store today there’s a row of printers on the left-hand side, and they’re all competing on price. Then there’s a row of digital cameras on right-hand side, and they’re competing on megapixels and price.
“We want the consumer to walk in and see the Windows Vista digital memories area where there are cameras, printers, photo management software and online services. They’ll all have the premium logo and will all be grouped together – all those pieces will be part of the digital memories story. So we’ll be looking at who are potential partners for digital cameras, memory cards, printers, software, online service providers,” Block says.
I don’t think this marketing blitz has anything to do with stickers though. It has everything to do smart marketing activities. Nobody buys an operating system because of what it can do by itself, it’s what it allows them to do with everything else they do and the hardware they buy to help them do those activities. I mean the last time I checked, most people have much more software installed on their computer than the OS, and they’ve got much more hardware than their monitor, keyboard and mouse.
Source: Microsoft plans Vista retail blitz
You’re right. Microsoft regularly forgets that most people don’t care about the OS. They want a computer lets them do what they want (edit photos, print, browse, whatever). Microsoft has always been mostly blind to what users want.