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The flat panel TV market is set to bottom claims research group GfK. They also claim that consumers buying flat panel displays prefer “Picture quality over price”.
Talking to SHN, GfK Account Director of Consumer Insights, Dr Morten Boyer said “The market is getting very close to bottoming out. During the past year we have seen some significant price drops and this needs to bottom out. This will lead to a lot more stability in the market.”
He also claimed that GfK research is showing that in Australia more and more people are using the internet to research information on consumer electronic products. He said, “We have been tracking this for a while and online is starting to have an impact on what people buy in the way of consumer electronic products”. He also said that the SmartHouse web site was showing up clearly in research as a source that consumers visited when looking for information on consumer electronic products.
The GfK ConsumerScope tracking service revealed that only 30 percent of consumers rated value for money as the most important decision factor when making a large screen TV purchase. The key among over 50% of the audience he said was picture quality.
“Many consumers like to buy products based on price or ‘value for money’ and this is the case across nearly all product categories covered, with an average of 40-50 percent of all digital camera, PC and mobile phone consumers. However it is not the case with large screen TV’s and this is an exception” he said.
So what is it that makes TV consumers so different? According to GFK, the role of the retailers in consumer buying behavior is crucial, and the category of TVs provides consumers with a unique opportunity to see their target product “in action”.
Said Boyer, “In-store, consumers are generally not able to take photos, talk on mobiles, or use computer applications. They can, however, watch TV. Without the ability to assess what a product is actually designed to do, consumers must rely on the remaining factors that are available to compare and contrast (e.g. price). This could be why the TV consumer is more motivated by a quality-related attribute, rather than the almighty dollar”.
