Wharton marketing: why the academic view is meaningless
January 25, 2007Cult of Mac covers a Wharton analysis of recent Apple announcements:
Giant Off-base Conclusion No. 1: Design is just about being cool.
I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but in the United States, the vast majority of people still don’t understand what good design is really about. Good design is not about aesthetics. It’s about solving people’s needs. It’s about clarifying the complex. It’s about looking good AND working better. People care a little bit about features. They care way more about knowing how to use them. Here’s Fader’s take:And, I think on the feature side, it doesn’t really have that many features. In fact, it’s missing some really, really important features. What it has [going] for it is just a really cool design factor and that’s not enough. It’s going to help them to differentiate themselves from the other phones out there, but it’s not going to be enough to really be a winning entry.
Does he know what he’s even arguing in terms of design here? The breakthrough on the iPhone is not how it looks. It’s how it works. Don’t look at the appearance of the interface, look at how brilliantly the iPhone switches modes and hooks its features into one another. It’s about integration AND intuition. You don’t have to make trade-offs.
Different people have opinions on which feature is the most important – Apple needs to address the concerns of the mass market demand, not the whine of technolphiles. It’s also very telling that Fader doesn’t identify one feature which he thinks is important.
Cult of Mac didn’t cover this part so I’ll do it:
Knowledge@Wharton: Do you have any final advice for Apple or any other PC company that’s trying to transition into the home entertainment business?
Fader: Absolutely. Make customers happy; give them what they want. And that means to Apple, open up the systems to try to accommodate other formats and try to work with other firms. That’s really, really important. When you constrain people — when you tell people, “We can give you anything that you want but here are the limitations on it” — that’s going to be a real limit to a firm’s growth and success.
What Fader is talking about is making Microsoft, Napster, and Apple competitors happy, not their consumers. Apple is under no obligation to appease or acquiesce to the demands of their competitors or critics. 21.1 million people bought iPods last quarter and, by all appearances, Apple has made their ownership a happy one.
The problem with that theory is that customers don’t care.
The same CDs I buy at WalMart, Tower Records, receive as gifts, borrow from friends, etc. work in my CD player. Why doesn’t the music I buy from Napster work on my iPod? This is something that some customers will care about–and more and more will when they run into it.
One of the things about DRM–which is really the problem here–is that when you run into it, it leaves a sour taste in your mouth. For example, last year I heard a couple of songs that I liked. I went over to the iTunes Store to buy them. I noticed they had music videos for those songs. After watching the video, I figured I’d buy that instead.
Of course, I have no iPod. I burn the music to a CD to listen to it in the car. So, after buying the videos, I discovered I couldn’t burn the audio track to CD. This wasn’t mentioned anywhere, and Apple has always loudly proclaimed that I can burn my music to CD. Well, this is music. I’m burning it to CD. Nope–can’t do it.
So now I’m one unhappy consumer.
I agree with Mr. Fader. Make customers happy by not putting up artificial restrictions. To quote Steve Jobs, “At Apple, it’s about the music.” It shouldn’t be about the format.
[...] Wharton marketing professor Peter Fadel provides today’s object lesson in why an MBA may be a tremendous waste of your time. [...]
@Peter,
OK. I’m confused here.
You bought a video and wondered why it wouldn’t play as an audio file on a CD.
Are you serious?
Do you complain that your DVD videos won’t play in your car CD player?
Do you complain that your VHS cassettes don’t play when attached to your turntable?
Do yo complain when you push bread into your computer and it doesn’t come out as toast?
No? Of course not. That would be ridiculous. Only a moron would think that.
But burning a video to a CD and expecting it to play as ‘music’ in your car CD player is a perfectly reasonable expectation?
Erm. Ok.
Maybe you should avoid technology. Forever. Please.
He had his choice of buying the song with or without the promotional video, and he chose to get it with the video. It’s still a song, it still plays as music through the iPod headphones whether you’re looking at the display or not.
The only reason he couldn’t burn it to a CD like every other music track is that the record label has different licensing for the version with the video.
And come to think of it, why shouldn’t I be able to play my DVD on my car CD player? The media looks identical and both have audio. Stupid engineers.
On the other hand, if he would have just purchased an iPod, all his problems would be solved. No format concerns at all–play videos through the car stereo, no Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD incompatibilities, just one flash/HD media storage user experience to rule them all.
I just want to be upfront– I am NOT a technophile. I do not own an iPod. BUT I have been making a foray into how technology can serve my needs. And from what I’ve learned, I’m with Ben– it isn’t the “media” looking the same– it is the format application that you are struggling with. What you are calling the “media” d2, is a storage vehicle– a CD– it stores and transports information, all types of information.
It is like asking your iPod to work a word.doc– it doesn’t use that format for that information. Video and audio demand different formats so they can compress the amount and type of data that they are managing. And there are all different formats that can handle audio and video successfully.
The problem is that we see the storage vehicle and we assume that it has the same capabilities as other storage vehicles… doesn’t. This is more an issue of the consumer’s product understanding– the technology is more advanced than the average user, and the average user makes logical assumptions based on previous experience (it looks like a duck it must be a duck) but because it looks like a duck in this case, it certainly doesn’t mean it quacks like one…
Better labels and disclosure statements might help– if the general user will read them.
I am sure though that the technology for what you are looking to do will be available to the user (if it isn’t already!) sooner than you think.
@d2
…and blockquotes don’t work very well in comments.
You people need to get a copy of Audio Hijack Pro.
Audio Hijack Pro gives you the freedom to listen to audio when you want and how you want. Record any audio with Audio Hijack Pro – it’s the cornerstone of your digital audio experience. Exclusively for Mac OS X.
http://www.rogueamoeba.com
Oh, James, “Exclusively for Mac OS X.” Sigh.
Sigh indeed wellwisher
“Do yo complain when you push bread into your computer and it doesn’t come out as toast?”
You’ve obviously never used an early-model Pentium. They make great toasters.
Hey all,
I think you’re all being a little tough on Peter. Clearly he didn’t expect to use a video file on his car stereo. His point was that, having purchased the song as a part of a movie file, he expected to be able to burn just the audio element to CD for extra-Mac enjoyment.
My reply is that, unfortunately, this is down to the recording industries’ copyright stipulations. As has been noted, a movie file is essentially a distinct medium, and as such taking the audio from it and moving it to another medium would be akin to buying a DVD music video and copying the audio onto another CD – technically, a breach of copyright. Peter, please don’t blame Apple for doing what they must to comply with the recording industry’s copyright demands. Just accept that you made a mistake, and consider writing an email to Apple suggesting they have a disclaimer on music video downloads indicating the restrictions.
@Ben: Except if I take a DVD or VHS and run it through my receiver and into my big old college boy speakers, I can record it on my old-school dual cassette recorder and just capture the audio track.
Maybe you aren’t thirty yet, Ben, but those of us who are past that remember the good old days when the Dead Kennedys released cassette versions of their albums with one side blank. The liner notes read: “Home Recording is destroying the major label record industry, therefore Side 2 has been left blank for your convenience.”
Grow up.
And as for iTunes, et al, I am still waiting for the day when bands sell their own music over the internets and say “screw the record companies”. 95% of what gets published every year is crap, yet those silly Grammy awards go to the best teeny-bopper band that can sell more records.
Put them on the web, let consumers decide without massive ad campaigns and marketing ploys.
/rant
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