A Victim of Feature Fatigue

Like many consumers in today’s ever changing world of technology, I hate to admit that I have as well fallen victim of feature fatigue. When in dire need of a new cell phone, I went to the Cingular store in hopes of just finding a phone that gets the job done—calling people. However, the salesperson, kept talking up Nokia’s N75 and the price was too comparable to simpler phones. Why pay $30 less for a phone that has much less use when I could get a phone, camera, music player, and more for an asking price that was so hard to pass up? The phone was extremely confusing with so many different features, and I realized that I didn’t use about 95% of them. Things that were supposed to be simple, such as putting it on silent mode and setting the alarm, were a much longer process. Also, because of the many features, the phone supplied low battery life. When my phone broke, I asked the insurance company if they could instead send me a cheaper phone to replace it. They could not help me with this so I ended up just taking my friends old Samsung which is much easier to use.

As the article stated, companies really need to tap into not only what customers say they want and think they want before they buy the product, but also what they want after the purchase and use of the product. As we have previously learned in the class, it is not always good to ask customers what they want because sometimes they don’t even know. Instead, companies should learn from past mistakes in this instance and realize that the majority prefer easier to use products with less features. Making this assumption can help the return rate of products, future purchases, and word-of-mouth. Building simpler products is also key in product development. The product should be able to easily and fully carry out the demands of what it was initially meant to do. The article also suggests that decision aids should be used to help consumers decide on a product that is right for them. In my case, the salesperson talked me into getting a more complicated phone which later caused negative word of mouth and a halt to repeat purchases of the brand in general. Instead, salespeople could be trained to better serve a consumer’s needs or perhaps a computer could be placed in the stores with a list of special features. While consumers click on the features they want in a phone, the search engine narrows down the specific phones that match the priorities to increase customer satisfaction.

While companies should focus on either decreasing product features or meeting consumers’ needs, they should also find better ways to compensate customers if they are unhappy with the product. This would not help them with that product line specifically, but it may save some negative word of mouth from spreading and keep customers more loyal to the brand.