Electronic hardware next big thing for India : Minister
The Union government would unveil initiatives to reverse the current import dependence on electronic hardware by eventually transforming the country as a global manufacturing hub of electronic goods, Sachin Pilot, Union minister of state for information technology and communications, said on Thursday.
"Over 90 per cent of the $50-billion computer and electronic goods sold in the country today are being imported.
"The demand is expected to go up to $400 billion in the next eight years, which is more than the current oil import bill," he said at the second edition of the annual IT summit, 'Advantage AP'.
Electronic hardware is going to be the next big thing following the success story of software sector, which now contributes eight per cent to the gross domestic product, besides providing jobs to 2.9 million people, according to him.
Citing the recent global slowdown impacting the revenues of the Indian software industry, Pilot asked the IT companies to diversify the portfolio of export destinations to effectively hedge such business headwinds, and that too when 62 per cent of the Indian software exports are going to the US alone.
Most consumers just want better features
What makes you to choose a product over others? Well, a new study has found that consumers who are less knowledgeable about an item typically make choices based on differences that are easy to compare among available options.
"Companies expend a lot of resources on research and development to introduce new and unique features, without recognising that many of their customers have a preference for better rather than different features," the researchers said.
The research team that comprised Myungwoo Nam of INSEAD in Singapore, Jing Wang of University of Iowa, and Angela Lee of Northwestern University, detailed their findings in the Journal of Consumer Research.
In studies involving electronic products such as cellphones, digital cameras, MP3 players and laptops, the team found that expertise influences whether consumers choose products based on differences in standard features versus unique or extra features that are not shared by other brands.
Consumers with little product knowledge made choices based on basic features that could be easily compared among brands.
"Whereas novices rely more on standard features in making decisions, experts are more likely to use unique attributes instead," the authors found.
This leads the authors to suggest that companies should distinguish between expert and novice consumers.
For example, in the point and shoot digital camera market, where most consumers are novices, companies may be better off competing on having a higher number of pixels because the number of pixels can easily be compared across different brands.
However, in the digital single-lens reflex market, consumers are more sophisticated and are likely to recognize that the number of pixels is just one of many factors affecting picture quality.
Therefore, companies competing in the DSLR market should try to develop other unique attributes that cannot be directly compared with other brands.
"When companies are targeting experts, their strategy should focus more on developing products with unique attributes; and when companies are targeting consumers with little product knowledge, they should improve existing features and highlight their superior performance," the authors concluded.
"Companies expend a lot of resources on research and development to introduce new and unique features, without recognising that many of their customers have a preference for better rather than different features," the researchers said.
The research team that comprised Myungwoo Nam of INSEAD in Singapore, Jing Wang of University of Iowa, and Angela Lee of Northwestern University, detailed their findings in the Journal of Consumer Research.
In studies involving electronic products such as cellphones, digital cameras, MP3 players and laptops, the team found that expertise influences whether consumers choose products based on differences in standard features versus unique or extra features that are not shared by other brands.
Consumers with little product knowledge made choices based on basic features that could be easily compared among brands.
"Whereas novices rely more on standard features in making decisions, experts are more likely to use unique attributes instead," the authors found.
This leads the authors to suggest that companies should distinguish between expert and novice consumers.
For example, in the point and shoot digital camera market, where most consumers are novices, companies may be better off competing on having a higher number of pixels because the number of pixels can easily be compared across different brands.
However, in the digital single-lens reflex market, consumers are more sophisticated and are likely to recognize that the number of pixels is just one of many factors affecting picture quality.
Therefore, companies competing in the DSLR market should try to develop other unique attributes that cannot be directly compared with other brands.
"When companies are targeting experts, their strategy should focus more on developing products with unique attributes; and when companies are targeting consumers with little product knowledge, they should improve existing features and highlight their superior performance," the authors concluded.
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