From the Trenches: Digital disconnect

OPINION: The first piece of useful research detailing the sorts of ‘digital lifestyle’ products and services consumers buy was presented at an event held by channel analyst GfK this month.
 
The results shed a little bit more light on why Australians still don’t buy into the digital home concept. We have a way to go before we’re all living in a world of “digital bliss”.
 
A particularly scary finding was that out of the 1171 consumers surveyed, a staggering 35 percent of respondents were “digitally disconnected” or didn’t even have an internet connection at home. That’s right, not even dial-up! That explains a few things.
 
Still, Australians love digital devices. Look at the numbers -- $641 million worth of digital cameras were sold in the year ending April 2005. MP3 devices totalled $323 million in sales, Plasma TVs totalled $475 million and DVD software sales brought in $939 million over the same period.
 
What’s become apparent is that in a lot of cases, these products are being used as standalone devices. Consumers, it seems are happy for it to be this way. This is where the problem lies.
 
Manufacturers are pumping out these products at such a rapid rate that consumers and dare I say, retailers and resellers can’t keep up! To be honest, if you’re a reseller, I don’t blame you. It’s a difficult market to get your head around and it’s not being made any easier by the rate of change.
 
The analogue world of yesteryear was quite obviously easier to digest because it moved so much slower and consumers had time to take stock of what was happening.
 
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. No-one is sticking their neck out and putting all this stuff together!
 
Your customers won’t have a compelling reason to make the switch from analogue to digital products unless it’s explained properly.
 
Retailers like Harvey Norman are doing a good job displaying these products and the features and benefits of each one, but Harveys is not necessarily a solution provider.
 
Another issue is that “digital lifestyle” a term coined by GfK needs to be defined as one of my colleagues pointed out the other day. According to GfK, “digital lifestylers” were defined as people that accessed, used and distributed digital media every week. Not a bad explanation but we could certainly do better.
 
After all, it’s difficult to understand something unless you can define it and if we can’t define it properly, we’ve got no chance. What are your thoughts? Why are consumers getting left behind?

digital digital lifestyle home entertainment strategy