Kitchen Sink and All
No doubt some floating voters are swayed by the looks of a Mac and choose one over an Advent or Packard Bell PC but I’d be very surprised if the more discerning and technically literate buyer would buy a Creative WMA/MP3 Zen, rather than an Apple AAC/MP3 iPod or even a Sony Minidisc ATRAC player purely thanks to the looks of the hardware. Instead I would hope you end up making a balanced decision which takes account of reviews and that the prospective buyer also considers the format(s) in which their 40GB music library is stored.
It is almost impossible to make a wise buying decision about, say, a digital camera unless you read reviews and talk to friends who have recently bought a camera themselves. Once you decide that the ideal model is a Fujifilm FinePix S7000 Zoom you might think it logical to buy directly from Fujifilm, but this is impossible. You’re probably going to buy the camera over the phone or online and if you have a problem there’s every likelihood that you’ll have to return it to the manufacturer, rather than to the retailer.
Very often it’s convenient to visit a one stop shop to buy blank CDs, thermal paste, memory and a hard drive, or in the case of Amazon a couple of books and a CD, but once I’m buying something that costs over £100 I’m happy to shop around for a few minutes and to weigh up the pros and cons of a second carriage charge.
You have to balance a number of considerations when you’re making a purchase. There’s convenience, availability, price and then you have to consider homogeneous products i.e. alternatives that are very similar. If you’re buying 512MB of PC3200 memory for your mum’s PC then you have dozens of alternatives and the key criteria will be availability and price. When it comes to a GeForce 7800 GT graphics card you’ll be hard pressed to separate an MSI from a PNY as the basic cards are probably made on the same production line. Once you’ve read the reviews and group tests you will probably head to Dabs or Scan with the intention of buying a graphics card from any of three or four brands, provided it is in stock and priced at a certain point. You are most unlikely to head down to PC World looking for the latest gaming graphics card at a keen price. You’ll be taking pot luck on which brands the etailer has in stock, but if you could visit your preferred manufacturer’s website and buy direct, I’m not sure that you’d care whether your new graphics card came from Ruislip, Milton Keynes or The Hague.
I’m certainly not bothered about the origin of my new kitchen sink but instead have more pressing concerns. Now, do I want a waste disposal unit or not? Decisions, decisions.
