Word of mouth is key to sales
Consumers still like to get their hands on new technology to get a feel for what it can do before they make a big purchase, according to the company behind a multi-room digital music player.
Thomas Meyer, worldwide manager of public relations at Sonos, said the biggest problem his company faced was in explaining exactly what the product was.
"We saw the same thing with Tivo, where people didn't understand what it did. But once they tried it out they became very vocal about how good it was," he said.
"One of the big issues when you're effectively creating a market is that it's inevitable that the knowledge base out there is limited as to what this device is, what does it do and what are the benefits," said Daren Siddall, media industry research analyst at Gartner.
"Essentially you have the difficulty of convincing consumers that indeed you have a valuable piece of kit that they should be investing what is actually quite a significant sum," he added.
Meyer said the biggest challenge for companies with new technology was getting the kit into users' hands, but that this was key to selling the product.
"It's no surprise that a lot of our sales happen on a Monday, when users have seen the Sonos system in action at a friend's house or at a party and come looking for it," said Meyer.
"Once people use the product they can see what it does and they love it."
"You're targeting a product which is very high-end, very specialist and in a very niche market so that's why word of mouth is absolutely critical," said Siddell.
"If you were to splash out on advertising on the TV or in the papers it would not be money well spent," he added.
Sonos has launched a smaller version of its ZP100 music system, which can streamed tunes around the home and control them in different rooms using an iPod-like remote control.
The ZP80 has removed the ZP100's amp to obtain its smaller size and only has two network connections on the back to allow other devices to use your wireless network.
However, Siddell said users were cautious about making large purchases in a new area they didn't understand.
He pointed to Apple's Airport Express as a similar product that uses Airtunes to stream music to your stereo or powered speakers.
"Airport doesn't come with the controller like Sonos, unless you have an iMac and buy the remote control, but at $129 that might be good enough for consumers to test the water and see if this is a technology they're going to be interested in," he said.
Consumers still like to get their hands on new technology to get a feel for what it can do before they make a big purchase, according to the company behind a multi-room digital music player.
Thomas Meyer, worldwide manager of public relations at Sonos, said the biggest problem his company faced was in explaining exactly what the product was.
"We saw the same thing with Tivo, where people didn't understand what it did. But once they tried it out they became very vocal about how good it was," he said.
"One of the big issues when you're effectively creating a market is that it's inevitable that the knowledge base out there is limited as to what this device is, what does it do and what are the benefits," said Daren Siddall, media industry research analyst at Gartner.
"Essentially you have the difficulty of convincing consumers that indeed you have a valuable piece of kit that they should be investing what is actually quite a significant sum," he added.
Meyer said the biggest challenge for companies with new technology was getting the kit into users' hands, but that this was key to selling the product.
"It's no surprise that a lot of our sales happen on a Monday, when users have seen the Sonos system in action at a friend's house or at a party and come looking for it," said Meyer.
"Once people use the product they can see what it does and they love it."
"You're targeting a product which is very high-end, very specialist and in a very niche market so that's why word of mouth is absolutely critical," said Siddell.
"If you were to splash out on advertising on the TV or in the papers it would not be money well spent," he added.
Sonos has launched a smaller version of its ZP100 music system, which can streamed tunes around the home and control them in different rooms using an iPod-like remote control.
The ZP80 has removed the ZP100's amp to obtain its smaller size and only has two network connections on the back to allow other devices to use your wireless network.
However, Siddell said users were cautious about making large purchases in a new area they didn't understand.
He pointed to Apple's Airport Express as a similar product that uses Airtunes to stream music to your stereo or powered speakers.
"Airport doesn't come with the controller like Sonos, unless you have an iMac and buy the remote control, but at $129 that might be good enough for consumers to test the water and see if this is a technology they're going to be interested in," he said.
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