As the personal computer matures, the logical, evolutionary step is the emergence of more sophisticated consumers. They're increasingly not first- or second-time buyers, but older and (hopefully) wiser, fifth- or sixth-time buyers.
These people need more sophisticated solutions than the hand-holding that beginners demand, and the seasoned consumer is less likely to window-shop and more likely to order via mail-order or telephone, or at least based on price point.
"Prosumer" is, of course, a term that emerged as professional-quality results started to become available at the high end of the consumer price points. It happened in stereos, it's happening in digital video camcorders and editing decks and - surprise, surprise - it's happening with digital audio and video on computers.
The serious pros, those who scoff at anything that costs less than about $50,000, will continue to point out the limitations of the prosumer-priced products, but the people willing to put up with a bit of cobbling together of bits and pieces, and the inevitable glitches that occur, make up a hungry market that is feeding on the true power-centre of Intel and Microsoft's 1998 plans: digital audio and video.
Big changes have happened in the camcorder and VCR market over the past few months. For one thing, DVD, despite its birth pains, is most definitely here. Another phenomenon is the way that digital video cameras are catching on. As soon as the prices approaches those of analog camcorders (and, with the first-generation JVC DV camcorder already discounted as low as US$1,295, this isn't far away), the old-wave consumer-class products will be toast.
Indeed, although Apple's newest PowerMacs rightfully put any of its 1996-era models to shame, it was the Mac clones from Motorola, Umax and Power Computing that shook up that market, much as Compaq and the second wave of PC clones stole the thunder from IBM in the late '80s. And, despite Apple's woes, the miniscule Mac market still manages to lead the way for the next generation of PC "innovation." Today's better Mac clones deliver exceptional AV performance thanks to a 60MHz bus, dual SCSI buses with AV drives, built-in DVD and/or Jaz drives and 300MHz or faster processors. The Mac has proven strong in multimedia, but the advent of high-performance PC digital video-capture and MPEG encoding cards at prosumer-friendly price points suggests that the Big Multimedia PC is coming on strong, too. Prosumers are driven by performance and compatibility issues, not brand loyalty.
Microsoft and its hardware partners, for their part, have proclaimed the "PC98 spec," which, among other things, specifies a PCI-based PC design with a minimum 200MHz CPU, 32MB RAM, 2MB hard drive and the other trappings that reflect the enormous potential of hi-fi digital video and audio to sell ever-faster PCs. PCs will evolve toward the dual independent bus architecture of Pentium II, and the Advanced Graphics Port design will give a needed boost to drive yet another stage of PC graphics evolution.
Part of the first wave of this "wise-buyer" trend is Joel Kocher, formerly a vice-president at Dell, and now the CEO of Power Computing.
Quoted in a recent MacWeek, Kocher stated, "It was our belief [at Dell] that when customers evolved to the point of third-, fourth- and fifth- generation purchases, their criteria for making a decision on a vendor change. Seeing, touching, feeling the computer just wasn't important enough anymore to pay the mark-ups associated with a traditional retail establishment."
Kocher maintains that mail order is not an effective distribution channel for the first-time buyer. "But," he notes, "the number of first-time buyers is shrinking hourly."
So, what are the buying patterns of the fourth- or fifth-time buyer? Increasingly, they are the technology advisors for a pool of users. Understanding and catering to the needs of these key influencers is a trend that has caught the attention of forward-thinking vendors both large and small.
These days, a growing number of progressive companies (and not just ones in the computer business) put experts on-line to demonstrate the vendor's expertise and knowledge and, for want of a better word, evangelize their specialties. (If you aren't familiar with the techniques of technology evangelism, the book Selling the Dream by longtime Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki is a good place to start.)
An increasingly popular strategy is to host (and keep up to date) a Frequently Asked Questions Web page. You can ask for nothing more than to become the de facto standard for information on a product category that just happens to be your company's specialty. If you build it, the prosumers will come.
Following the appropriate newsgroups will tell you usually even before the official release, as beta-test reports filter in, what the caveats and solutions are. FAQs will usually list recommended system configurations. With a little luck, you'll build and learn to deeply know a system based on the accumulated expertise of dozens of experts.
Remember, best-of-breed products change like the wind. Don't get so attached to a product line that you, too, end up as an also-ran.
The effective evangelist doesn't hang around in the newsgroup areas slamming the competition, nor do they act as a sales flack, but rather as a solution provider. And when your company's solutions target the prosumer, you can begin with a sale that grows into a long-term relationship.
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