I would like to start with a disclaimer. I have long admired Apple designed products even though I have never owned an Apple product. Every time I would get an interest in buying one and come to a store to try them, I would find them disappointing, as very enthusiastic Apple supporters seem to create expectations, that are very difficult to meet. I am also an admirer of Steven Jobs, perhaps because I have never met him in person . However this writing is not about my personal opinions, but a comparative analysis of market intelligence produced by our algorithms, based on customer generated content or Word of Mouth, and some additional external information sources that will be specified as I sight them.

Two latest Apple products are generating a lot of press and some of it is decidedly negative – iPad and iPhone 4. This writing will focus on the analysis of the iPad devices. When you try do “comparative” analysis one starts with a list of products to compare and iPad makes it very difficult as it seem to be positioned to compete with e-readers as well as tablets. The tablets category definition presents us with yet another challenge, so for the purpose of this analysis I decided to compare iPad with popular e- or digital book devices as well as some tablet devices that do not have a physical keyboards. Some popular retail website offer a very useful hint to see what percent of people who looked at a product actually purchased it, and if not what was the product they did, however in the case of iPad or Kindle such information was thoughtfully removed from every site I have checked. I also am very disappointed not to find any customer reviews on the Apple store website. It is very hard to believe that none of over 3 millions of  iPad customers did not write about their product experience on the manufacturer store site. The only possible explanation of that can be found in accusations that Apple actually censors the iPad customer discussions the same way as they accused of doing for iPhone4 here and here. It is very disturbing if it is true.

So here is the list of products I have decided to compare in terms of them meeting their customers expectations. You can make it larger if you click on the report.

Here is the scale legend for better understanding of the report.

iPad did not meet expectations of their customers, who wrote the reviews with 53% reported negative experiences (0.91) related to Reliability, and 65% of comments about Support were negative (0.94). To be fair, the customers are overwhelmingly impressed with screen readability (100% rated 1.81)  and usability of the device (96% rated 1.53).

I know the Apple just reported 78% increase in profits, but with 63% of their flagship product customers reporting that its value did not meet their expectations (0.98), I can’t help but wonder how long it would take for Apple to start loosing it’s “freshness”.

Chris Haughey, The Amazing Marketing Machine, is testing and experimenting with our Market Intelligence Reporting to assess its methodology, accuracy and utility. He was very kind to let me publish his perspective on DVD/Blu-ray market segment.

DVD and Blu-ray devices analysis by Chris Haugley

This time we analyzed Blu-ray Disk Players. As of this date we monitor 56 products in this category and analyzed 6,482 reviews written by their customers. However some of these products have not accumulated enough reviews to produce statistically representative and accurate metrics, so we filtered them out of the competition. The second round disqualified any product that failed to meet Customer Expectations with its Functionality, Reliability or Support.

Sylvania NB530SLX Blu-ray disc player wins 2010 Piplzchoice Award

This week we analyzed Customer Reviews for Bluetooth Headsets. As of this date we monitor 30 products in this category and analyzed 2,977 reviews written by their customers. However some of these products have not accumulated enough reviews to produce statistically representative and accurate metrics, so we filtered them out of the competition. The second round disqualified any product that failed to meet Customer Expectations with its Functionality, Reliability or Support.

Motorola H680
2010 Piplzchoice Award winner
44.5% above average Customer Satisfaction in its Category
The winners are chosen by their customers

For full list of products in this category and Customer Reviews used for this research, select “Accessories & Supplies > Telephone Accessories” Category in Product Reputation Market Intelligence Reporter on this site. The is only one runner up in this category – Jabra EXTREME Bluetooth Headset as the rest of the products failed to clear our filters.
2010 Piplzchoice Award for Bluetooth Headsets goes to Motorola H680

As any business seeks to better understand customer needs and behaviors, it’s no secret that Social Media has opened more doors to CRM opportunities than ever before.  Last week while reading a recent marketing blog, I was amazed to observe that the writer failed to suggest the current trend of social networking as a frontline method for creating a relationship with customers.

Like never before, Social Media is providing a colossal platform allowing us to hear what our customers are saying.   It is quickly becoming one of the best ways to engage a customer and gain valuable insight into their experience with our products as well as those of our competition.  Are you listening?

This explosive technology could permit any business to identify competitive threats or opportunities through information that might not otherwise be detected without listening to thousands of customers.  Historically, formal focus groups were utilized as the most common means of collecting this data in-person from the end user.  Perhaps one could imply that today social media is quickly becoming the new “focus group”.

Consider for a moment that while traditional focus groups draw in customers to discuss their experiences, so are Social Networks providing the same information.  Is there really a significant difference?  The value of a focus group depends largely on quality of questions posed to the participants with all the biases that are incorporated into a question. The main disparity is that social media presents a very public review of a product or company’s benefits and even shortcomings.  However, we must not ignore the exponential numbers of consumers who are vocalizing this valuable data.  It is often more candid than any focus group could provide.

Getting connected with them is just part of the solution.  Connecting & engaging within these social mediums is relatively easy part.  Nevertheless, just like any other ‘marketing” effort, its success is not realized without measurement.  Therefore, the opportunity exists in figuring out what to do with the unstructured data.

Fortunately there is technology available to “interpret” this valuable data. Utilizing a multi-dimensional analysis, we convert various forms of feedback into an actionable plan then we take it one step further.  We are examining customer ratings across the market of nearly 20,000 products.  Many of the companies who have attempted their own translations had to invest very significant amounts of money into text mining implementation projects that allow handling feedback about only their own products.  With more than 2 million reviews, our database can deliver satisfaction scores from real world consumers about your products as well as that of your competition.

Self help author and motivational speaker, Robert Kiyosaki,  was quoted last year as saying ‘I am a bit old to focus on social media now but I spend an average of two hundred thousand dollars monthly through hired employees or consultants on social media, online reputation etc’.  While the use of social media as a marketing tool is still in its early stages, let’s not ignore this novel opportunity to act on customer feedback.

Clay Shirky once said in on of his presentations – “There is no information overload – it is filters failure”

Some people complain that the Internet has created overwhelming volumes of information.  Is there really too much information about objects of interest or is the perception of overwhelming volume actually misstated? Perhaps the issue is not quantity but level of quality. It is a matter of perception and focus; the ability to discriminate signal from background noise.  Both producers and consumers care about what is said about a product or service equates to dollars or pounds or yen because positive statements will usually translate into higher demand.  It is ironic how growing numbers of sophisticated product producers and consumers are tapping into the same information stream that has only recently come out of emerging social networks; a kind of digital crowdwisdom.

Whether consumers are overwhelmed by the amount of product information or just lazy, many consumers apparently prefer the conversation threads shared by digital “friends” in their social network over search engine result pages generated by a product’s keywords and metadata tags. There is a very human tendency to seek out the opinion or advice of a “social herd” of like-minded people with similar values, interests, and needs.  It is more than just a contemporary cynicism of Madison Avenue hype and infomercial verbiage. Following the “virtual herd” may at first sound like a derogatory statement but it is in fact fair and descriptive.  Herding is an adaptive trait that fosters very important social behaviors. Though it can, if carried to an extreme like lemmings jumping off a cliff appear pointless, following a “digital” herd saves time and minimizes personal risk. Whether inexperienced or as mentioned above, overwhelmed by too much information, “attending” to what the other member’s of one’s social circle say, do, or prefer is like a filtering device. Some people feel that the wider their circle and the greater the consensus toward a selection, the less risky their final choice. This filtering is especially cost-efficient. A consumer, after finding a common and comfortable social niche, has to neither spend additional time nor effort to select objects of value or need; they just follow the Word-of-Mouth recommendations of their trusted circle and their satisfaction is guaranteed.

Sophisticated product producers recognize that tapping into these social niches, if they can find them, provide free and truthful evaluations of what is right and wrong with their product line.  Crowdwisdom would appear to reflect unsolicited, and therefore one hopes, unbiased evaluations of many different facets of a product. If postings in some niche social network discuss a product, its reputation, and its brand over some reasonable time frame, a producer could conclude the data is accurate rather than misrepresented, for example, by a competitor’s planted remarks or their own staff trying to “market” company goods. They could conclude it is balanced rather than atypical and biased when, for example, a single irate customer monopolizes bandwidth with redundant rants.  Producers who cast their virtual nets over social networks to catch real-time comments must follow the best practices in statistical sampling and testing of experienced psychologists and trained sociologist. Crowdwisdom is not necessarily wise but it is, when collected carefully, extremely relevant. Especially in this digital age where many people struggle to find the signal in all the noise, it is cost-effective and an adaptive trait that minimizes personal risk. It doesn’t matter whether or not you trust or even like everyone in your social circle, if the group hangs out at a particular water hole, it must be safe to go there to drink.

Your online reputation is always at risk! Whether you are protecting your personal “brand” or securing the reputation of a product or service you sell, the most significant “bang for your buck” can come from an unsolicited source; a link that surfaces in a trade-related blog post, a YouTube video that goes viral, or the complementary back link on a customer’s personal blog. Social network “market intelligence” has a significant and growing voice in advertising dialog; it is what people say about you rather than what you say about yourself!

Imagine a product review that shows 5% of your customers were reporting specific design issues with, for example, the battery compartment latch on an MP3 player you sell. Image a tool that would, in minutes, help you factor out this specific design issue, recalculate a customer satisfaction index, and project that your product would outscore the competition by 4.2%. Would an online tool like this help you manage your product and your career?

Several analytic tools and techniques on the market offer easy-to-use interfaces that offer multiple selections of key performance variables and listings of competing manufacturers. These tools can filter the number of sampled reviews and adjust ranges for different scores and indices. What should you look for in such a tool?

· Verify that data collection techniques are carefully performed. Are samples filtered for promotional content and duplication? Are they run on a regular recurring basis? We believe that, depending on the market, data over 30 days old is stale.

· Select a tool that provides multiple independent criteria for your product reputation metric. Make certain your underlying data sample reliably support variables. Look for robust reporting features that are easy-to-use and well-documented.

· Confirm features that allow you to export your data to ANY spreadsheet (using, for example, comma-separated variable, CSV, format).

Whether you are a product managers or an entrepreneur, you need actionable insights to identify how well your product meets your customers’ expectations. Yesterday’s excitement becomes today’s expectation and tomorrow’s “must-be”. The ever-growing “digital word-of mouth” coinciding with the ebb and flow of social media phenomena like Facebook and Twitter can exaggerate shifts in perception and opinion over very short periods of time.

Customer satisfaction is no longer a simple statistic. Consider this key performance indicator of success as an aggregate of perceived reputation; your product’s functionality (its feature set), its reliability and its accessibility through support from you as the manufacturer, included documentation, and the friendliness of the user interface. One unexpected effect these “socially-shared expectations” have is the speed at which they can unpredictably change. Protect your product and your brand. Your online reputation and the reputation of your products need constant monitoring. Your livelihood probably depends on it!

This week we analyzed Customer Reviews for Computer Speakers. As of this date we monitor 136 products in this category and analyzed 10,265 reviews written by their customers. However some of these products have not accumulated enough reviews to produce statistically representative and accurate metrics, so we filtered them out of the competition. The second round disqualified any product that failed to meet Customer Expectations with its Functionality, Reliability or Support.

Logitech Z-3 Wood Grained 2.1 Speakers
2010 Piplzchoice Award winner
20.3% above average Customer Satisfaction in its Category
The winners are chosen by their customers

Below is the list of the top runner up products:

Logitech Z-3 Wood Grained 2.1 Speakers wins 2010 Piplzchoice Award

For full list of products in this category and Customer Reviews used for this research, select “Computers & Accessories > Computer Speakers ” Category in Product Reputation Market Intelligence Report.

Social media blogs and social networks of like-minded consumers and are not only reporting the latest buyer trends and behavior, they are subtly dictating a buyer’s choice. They publicize, for example, what customers can expect in current product features and services. This information acts like a “satisfaction driver” literally biasing the customer even before they go out to shop about the “must-be” parts of their purchases. If your product fails to provide what customers take for granted, your sales will drop and your product reputation will quickly suffer. Imagine that next blog posting that mentions your product’s features or support services in a negative way! You need to know what customers are saying about your product and your reputation.

Provide a venue and build a relationship

Is your product or brand associated with a social media website? A user forum? A company blog? Leverage the sense of anonymity an online forum offers. Encourage active participation with polls, surveys, and “The Most Burning Question?” submissions. When have you ever had the opportunity to so cost-effectively talk to a customer on a one-to-one basis? There is overhead in terms of administrative time but the benefits will more than likely outweigh the costs. If you offer and initially promise participation of management; keep your word! If someone posts a comment, make certain someone in authority quickly responds with more than just a robotic thank you. You don’t have to agree with comments but, you do have to prove you have read them!

Post surveys and polls about your product to encourage participation

Make certain you clearly state when and where results will be published. See if anyone is paying attention. When posting results of your surveys and polls, use the interest generated to ask visitors to respond to either another poll or a sign up email list. Give information before you ask for a name and an email address. Remember that negative criticism more often than not is more valuable than praise and fearless publishing it is a mark of transparency (good management) and character.

Grow your brand and tell people about it

Developing name and “brand” recognition by “spreading it horizontally” into collateral areas in your geographic community, on the websites and forums of colleagues AND competitors in your industry, and, most important, in your “virtual business niche”. Consider providing “expert”answers on public forums. Offer charitable donations both in your local physical world as well as in cyberspace. Charity builds your persona, your online reputation, and your brand recognition. Telling your customers about your charity is not blatant self-promotion; it can be a public announcement.

Last weekend we have passed another milestone – we are now monitoring product reputation of over 20,000 products and analyzed over 2,000,000 customer reviews.

The next few weeks will bring new functional releases as well as changes to the structure of our website that hopefully make it easier to use. Thank you for your feedback and recommendations.