Why buying a camera or a printer or even a laptop is still difficult?

In this age of internet where information is available at your fingertips, you would expect making a buying decision like buying a camera or a printer or even a notebook would be easy from a large choice that exist today?

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Sadly, it isn’t. At least not for me when I was recently on a similar decision path. There are many instances when I see my friends on social media just asking for a direct help and advice, in case someone has already made a decision and they can just follow the advice. Hours of search and research and reading reviews leads to nothing but a feeling of exasperation. It feels as if you will always miss out on something or miss a great deal (that is round the corner) that you have not think about and as a result feel bad about making a decision.

The more I think, I feel the market has become highly commoditized where differentiation is becoming difficult even by the so called experts and website. Understanding differentiation based on product features ain’t easy – and knowing which product features to base your decision on is very complex and complicated.

The only true differentiation that most people can understand is “Price”. Not surprising to see price being a crucial factor in such a complicated decision making process.

4 thoughts on “Why buying a camera or a printer or even a laptop is still difficult?

  1. Taking a contrarian view: it’s now actually pretty easy to to find the exact thing you want to buy. As usual you need to really know why you want to do with the new device, for how long, how much you want to pay, and the quality of results you want from it. You need to weigh which of the questions are more important for you. Not all are as important.

    So if you are looking for a lightweight workhorse laptop which you can carry everywhere, can run all software with ease, and be there 5 years with you, there is only one real choice.

  2. I feel that’s where the issue lies – knowing the exact thing that you want to buy and match it to the product that is available. It may seems counter intuitive but knowing what you want is where many people struggle. I always see amateur photographer struggling to decide which camera to buy for the two reasons mentioned above. And after a while, price becomes an important factor because it is something that is easy to comprehend and compare.

    I see this happening in business as well where customers are not able to differentiate between two vendors offering similar services and then price becomes the most important decision making criteria.

    • Never ever go with such key parameters like cost which can be modified by anyone to confuse the buyers in above case. It’s not at all the deciding factor when choosing the quality as per quality management as well.
      Very simple example like 200 rupees apple may cost you more but it has certain quality aspect and 100 rupees apple though meeting your need may not fit to your health.

  3. I agree – once you make price as the key deciding criteria, both buyer and seller may end up with below potential transaction. Seller can discount because customers may not be able to differentiate his/her quality offering.

    In your apple examples, higher price is implicitly associated with better quality. So again, price becomes a key criteria when it is difficult to know what good quality apples mean.

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