Blackberrys Consumerism - Essay Example

24 February Assignment Consumerism is rampant in the world today as the needs and desires of the people have gone on increasing as compared to the past. Today, entrepreneurs look at how they may be able to create a need for an individual rather than addressing the needs that people already have. This forms a bigger opening for them to fill and thus, the advent of more and more different kinds of goods and services has become more of a commonality. Every consumer has some kind of expectation regarding a certain commodity or service; this is because of many reasons, the chief one being the kind of advertising and branding that the product is subject to prior to its sale, attracting the consumer towards it in the first place. In this manner, people begin to want certain things and end up saving for them. After the purchase thus, if the product ends up not suiting their needs, it forms a void and unhappiness with respect to their purchase. The product thus loses its goodwill eventually as well. The objective of this paper is to underline two incidents regarding a good and a bad choice of purchase during the last year and comprehending the gap analysis of the companies with respect to the same in order to understand the discrepancies faced with the usage of the product. During the last year, a memorable product that I purchased was the iPhone 4; this phone had been released after a heavy bout of advertising and proclamations, over various sources of media and networking. Most people were excited about the launch of the iPhone because of the high class that it possessed. Its application and music market had already begun to soar in the good books of the consumers and thus there were thousands of pre orders given for the purchase of the iPhone on the very day that it would be launched. After conducting months of research and waiting for the phone to come out, I too was excited and hoped for the best for the release because of the expenses that I was putting into the same. Having saved up for a long time, the phone was finally in my reach and did not disappoint me one bit. Almost every service related to the phone exceeded expectations and the distributors and retailers selling the phone also provided excellent consumer services. All this added up to an extremely pleasant consumer purchase on my part and to date I am very happy with my phone because of the many things that it can do. On the other hand, I went ahead and bought a Blackberry 9360 recently in order to keep up to date with contacts belonging to the Blackberry Messenger world. This phone on the other hand disappointed me to a great extent; even though these smart phones are known for their messenger and messaging services, the phone is a duplicate of its previous versions and as a consumer I felt robbed after having paid more than double the amount of the Blackberry Curve, which gives the exact same performance if not more. The Blackberry, although sleek to look at, has no extra functions than that of the other Blackberries on the market. Other than the 5 megapixel camera, this phone felt a sham to me and as a consumer I felt a void after having used it for a short period of time. The software on the phone gets hung every now and then and the after sales services and not up to the mark. After a point, I have stopped bothering with trying to get my phone fixed and am simply continuing with the way it has been functioning. These two examples help to display how different companies create their products and services, and the high need for achievement that they may or may not have with respect to creating a product and selling it in the market. Both the phone companies have very high respect and regard in the market no doubt, however the sales and services of Apple as compared to Blackberry are much smoother and better in nature. As per personal experience, owning an Apple product to me as a consumer is much better than owning a Blackberry. This may be referred to as the gap that the company has in itself when it is not able to deliver a similar high performance or result as its rival companies. A gap analysis is conducted by a company to re examine its goals and look for a better way to achieve the same. It helps a company to determine whether or not it is on the right path and understand the ‘gaps’ that have been formed with respect to the current state that it is in, as compared to the objective state that it should be in. A gap therefore is also used to analyse the duration that it will take the company to reach a certain bar in order to fulfil its duties to the consumers. With respect to the examples provided above, Apple has been able to fairly reduce any gaps that it has in the making and selling of its products as compared to Blackberry. Blackberry on the other hand has a long way to go in order to reach where Apple is; it needs to take care of its hardware and software problems, as well as create something new that it has not already, in order to keep the consumer interested in the purchase of the product. The difference between the Apple and the Blackberry phone is that Apple has been able to identify what would uniquely appeal to the consumer and make him have the desire to buy the iPhone rather than simply having a want to buy any smart phone on the market. It is important for a company thus to be able to fill these so called gaps within its working and system in order to be able to retain its customers tomorrow. Today, if most Blackberry customers are not satisfied with the product, in some time they will soon switch to a new product. The market is a place where consumers have fleeting thoughts regarding goods and services and only if a company is able to retain their attention and interest, will they be interested in purchasing more and more products. At the end of the day, an individual possessing a Blackberry smart phone is unhappy and the truth is that he feels that he may as well have invested in a phone that is cheaper as compared to it. Thus, the company needs to conduct a proper gap analysis in order to identify its faults and fix the same to get itself back on top of the market. Works Cited “Gap Analysis”. Investopedia. Web. 24 Feb 2012. . "Consumerism - Good or Bad Thing? Essay." Term Paper Writing, Essay Editing, and Research Help. 29 Oct. 2008. Web. 13 Feb. 2012. . Read More