Selling 'upgrade' issues to lure big spenders

Monica A. Kappiantari, Contributor, Jakarta

GPRS, MP3, DVD, SMS, MMS, USB, PDA, MPEG, SCSI - these are all familiar abbreviations to the hi-tech savvy community and commoners as well.

They are so popular today they can be heard practically anywhere: from schools and street cafes to restaurants and popular hang-outs in big cities.

Are these people literally technology-literate? Not necessarily so. These newly coined abbreviations have become popular thanks to intensified marketing carried out by manufacturers of electronics products and cellular telephones.

Ria, a junior high student, has been nagging her parents, coaxing them to buy her a new cell phone with an MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) feature. She said her present cell phone was already obsolete as it could send SMS messages only.

Riadi, a young professional and a father of an only child, spent the previous weekend hunting for a new DVD players at a number of electronics centers across Jakarta. His wife grumbled as she knew her husband very rarely watched films at home. Their own VCD player, bought a few years ago, has been used only a few times.

A few years back, product differentiation seemed a very lucrative business for any company which offered innovative technology in their new products.

The marketing strategy adopted was very loud and clear: "Choose our brand as we have something that others don't have."

Some few examples about the past are the dazzling black- colored laptop of IBM, the broad screen of a Nokia cell phone, and the multi-colored Apple iMac.

For companies which enjoy copying other's creativity, they need to spend extra time and go through a complicated production process to imitate the items. Sometimes, they found that the items they just copied were already unpopular in the markets.

Today, when the technology has continued growing at a high speed as if nothing on earth can stop it, manufacturers of high- tech products can now adapt to the latest technology almost simultaneously.

Just look at the markets, when a mobile handset producer launched its latest item with GPRS and received a great response from its customers, its rivals soon flooded the market with similar products carrying the same facility.

So, where does the differentiation of a product from a company lie when rival firms launch similar products?

The TV commercial ads of Nokia, often broadcasts on many channels here, helps reveal one answer.

According to the Finnish giant, mobile phone users have to learn that the market is offering a product, which is not only new in style and facilities, but also look. The message is simple: the handsets currently in the users' hands are out-of- fashion, 'shame on you' and deserve to be dumped in a bowl of soup. So go rush to replace it with the brand new one.

And it's not Nokia alone doing that kind of ad.

Judging from such kinds of marketing strategy, manufacturers of high-technology products now have to work hard to both secure their existing markets and grab customers of their rivals by doing their best, including the campaign to upgrade their own products already purchased by customers, particularly from the wealthy class.

Even though more than 80 percent of Indonesia's 220 million people have been classified as poor, still the remaining percentage represents a big potential market. Even one percent of Indonesia's wealthy already surpasses the entire population of neighboring Singapore.

In other words, the market for high-tech products in Indonesia still provides a promising future.

But to make these people realize the need of high technology is much harder than to make them follow the prevailing habit or culture. Sadly to say, not all of these big spenders are high- tech savvy.

But they know how to deal with the problems, such as by joining a club related to their new toys. Here, they could collect information or exchange features from other users, who are masters in the technology and the new products.

In short, the rapid development of technology offers a plus to the marketing department and the market as well.

Then, if it happens that a buyer purchases the product simply to follow the existing trend, which often happens here, it is still a plus.