Research In Motion's loyalty problem - What? So What? Why?
According to data released Monday from Nielsen, only 42% of BlackBerry owners want their next phone to be a BlackBerry. A full 29% want an iPhone next, 21% want an Android phone, and 7% fall into the "other" category.
To the full article: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/top-stocks/blog.aspx?post=1788737
If you have invested in this ticker, you may ask yourself if this information is noise only, or something you may need to take into consideration...
To tell you the truth, I'm convinced these numbers indeed reflect people's intentions in general...
Companies like RIM, Nokia, and even Google, didn't manage to create an emotional relationship between the individual customer and their brand. This is something essential for the long run, but extremely hard to achieve, especially those days because of the growing culture of the CHANGE, the NEW, and the BUZZ... you name it... and the more-than-ever low cost-to-switch... and yes, smartphones in North America are seen as a commodity product despite the cumulative price (one-time acquisition fee + monthly fees).
To inspire people (which Apple does most of the time with their products), you need to possess the correct genes at DNA-level of your company...
At this stage, the market perception is that companies such as RIM, LGE, Nokia create great hardware & software, and try to mix some artificial storytelling around to make the product more human and attractive... @ Apple, it seems that the storytelling is the product, which inspire their customers in improving (some time synthetically but this doesn't really matter as we are in the "perception" world which is at the end of the day our personal reality) their quality of life.
Bottom line, it means RIM will need to invest more $$$ to keep its customer base and try to attract new customers in the future, which will not help the firm in its constant efforts to reduce its operational costs and increase its profit...
My 2c.
- Yohan
Labels: Blackberry, customer loyalty, marketing, perception
2 Comments:
Good analysis.
I think developers involvment and love for the platform is one of the key of RIM success/fail.
But don't be fooled by analysts, there are much more BB sold than iPhone and Android worldwide.
Although Android may lead BB before the end of this year.
Hi Greg,
I know you are THE expert (my Yoda) in this field, but I partially agree with your comment this time, for 2 main reasons:
(1) I don't think the developers' attraction to a specific platform is main key this time. I fully agree having compelling application content is an important stream to develop to provide more value to the customers, but this is not THE BIG THING that will enable RIM to secure its customer loyalty (this is my bet I may be wrong, I know this differs from the analysts' general view). I believe RIM should clarify its positioning, its messaging is too complicated if they really target the mass market.
(2) The absolute number of units shipped is not relevant in the equation here, the focus should be more on the trend...
- Yohan Albo
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