Consumer Psychology in the Industrial and Manufacturing Equipment Marketplace

Most successful online industrial auctions and classifieds are based on the Psychology of exclusivity.

Keywords:

Industrial Equipment, Manufacturing Equipment, Industrial Sales, Asset Sales, Equipment Classifieds, Manufacturing Sales

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People like a "special" price or exclusive offer directed only to them. Most Industrial and Manufacturing equipment buyers are seeking to be told that they are special.

Through a great deal of trial and error writing advertisements for Industrial and Manufacturing Equipment classifieds, I have learned to employ this technique to each and every classified and auction description I create.
Most successful online auction and classified listings are based on the element of exclusivity. First and foremost I almost always use a “special deal” offered only thought the channel I am using to market my equipment. It is important to stress that No outsider can participate and that the offer is only available if the buyer responds to the specific equipment listing where the savings or price point is offered.

Keeping with the same theme "FREE" is becoming an over used term on the web. While offering free shipping, free equipment installation or free support can be a useful technique in driving sales, it’s important not to over use the term. If you choose to use a "Free" offer of some kind it’s important to stress to you potential buyer why receiving the free service or ancillary product is so beneficial.

Remember that selling Industrial Equipment online is no different than selling any other product. Those of us that endeavor to sell not only the highest quality products, but to understand the buying habits as well as the psychology of our consumers, will succeed where others fail.

Feature Overload--Why Consumer Electronics Are So Complicated

Why are products so complex? "Hey, our cell phone takes pictures, sharpens knives, mows the lawn, pays your bills, steers your car, and cooks dinner, all by voice command!" Give us a break!

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It seems like everything is so complicated these days, especially anything electronic … which is more and more products everyday.

Why are they so complex? "Hey, our cell phone takes pictures, sharpens knives, mows the lawn, pays your bills, steers your car, and cooks dinner, all by voice command!" Give us a break!

Unfortunately, the reason so many electronic products are stuffed with features is that it is relatively cheap to add features to them! Do we consumers really want or need those functions? That is an entirely different question. Often, the answer is no. But the manufacturers add them, in many cases, simply so they can advertise that they have more features.

It costs a lot more to carefully determine what features are most wanted and to design products so that they are feature-rich, yet easy and intuitive for people to use. That is why this vital step is often shortcut.

Ever had trouble figuring out how to program your VCR? Did you ever think that perhaps it's not really your fault? It's the fault of the engineers who designed a lousy user interface to the product. And you think they are bad? Try using a combination VCR-DVD player!

There is second reason why manufacturers keep cramming more questionable features into products. In the case of products like cell phones, sales have slowed down because most people who wanted one have one. So, the phone manufacturers keep adding features in order to try to find ones that motivate people to buy new phones. They keep looking for that latest cool feature that people will be willing to buy a new phone to get.

Similarly, digital camera manufacturers keep coming out with cameras with more and more megapixels. Two megapixels, then 3.2, then 4.0, then 5, now 6, 7, even 8. Do consumers need 7 or 8 megapixel cameras? Not in the least. For shooting snapshots or sharing pictures online, a 3.2 megapixel camera is more than adequate. Really.

Why then, do manufacturers keep extending the capability? It is as we said above: 1) so they can advertise they have it, and 2) to try to get people to stick their old camera in a drawer and buy a new one.

Our advise: It pays to look carefully at the features being offered in the products you are interested in. Don't assume that a product with more features (or higher numbers) is the better choice. Often it is not, it is just more complicated to use! And, there is more to go wrong.

BLOATWARE

There is a similar phenomenon in software. It is called "bloatware." Programs that are overloaded with features, especially those not essential to the basic purpose for the software, carry this moniker.

When I was in the software industry and we were working on the next versions of software products, the programmers would sometimes come and say, "Hey I can add such-and-such feature with only 100 lines of code," or some such number. That’s not much, since a software program can have hundreds of thousands of lines of code. But often it was a feature the users of that software had no need for. Playing consumer advocate, I'd ask why such a feature would be needed. If the answer was questionable, I'd tell them to leave it out. Too often, though, those features make it into software products, and they become bloated with unnecessary features. Bloatware.

Consumer Directed Healthcare - A New trend

In post liberalisation India the healthcare industry is waking up to the fact that the consumer has to be pursued and enticed into visiting healthcare facilities of a particular brand and to buy healthcare products of a particular brand.

Keywords:

health care marketing solutions,health care communications india, healthcare consultants, healthcare marketing services,

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Gone are the days when the maxim that ruled the healthcare industry was "Build it and they will come", under the impression that that if people knew where services were located they would find their way to the clinics.

In post liberalisation India the healthcare industry is waking up to the fact that the consumer has to be pursued and enticed into visiting healthcare facilities of a particular brand and to buy healthcare products of a particular brand. With the government permitting 100 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in the health care industry, there is a deluge of private players in the Indian Healthcare market today. And this has dramatically changed the facade of healthcare marketing and communications in India.

Taking the case of hospitals, there is a wide variety of services (that are not just medical) on offer for the patient. From in-house multi cuisine restaurants, swimming pools, walking tracks, indoor games facilities, libraries and play areas to travel desks that arrange sightseeing tours and shopping for patients, you name it and they have it, all in a bid to woo more and more patients. Hospital promotions take on the form of Public Relations, VIP and visitor hospital tours and walk in exhibitions, loyalty and outreach programmes, support groups etc.

Similarly the pharmaceutical industry is going overboard in its attempts to appease the two routes that they have to reach out to the end consumers- doctors and pharmacists. For retailers it is boom time as they get free supplies of medicines, expensive gifts, holiday trips and also huge margins for promoting and selling particular brands at their outlets. With doctors the gifts, incentives and schemes are getting wilder by the day. The trend is to customise the gift to the doctor so that the pharmaceutical company actually meets a relevant need of the doctor rather than flooding him with things that he throws away or hands over to others. Taking examples of customised gifts it could be admission of a doctor’s child to a reputed school or even the reimbursement of shopping bills. All in an attempt to get a better hold on this indirect consumer. For over the counter drugs there are advertisements in all shapes and sizes visible just anywhere. With sponsoring TV programmes to conducting mass consumer contact programmes to free sampling, pharmaceutical companies are trying innovative marketing ideas to get a share of the consumer’s wallet.

One look at the statistics and the reason behind this intense competition gets clear. According to a Confederation of Indian Industry — McKinsey study on India’s health industry, the country’s spending on health care is expected to increase from Rs 86,000 crore at present to Rs 200,000 crore in the next decade. Health care’s contribution to India’s GDP will increase from the current 5.2 per cent to 8.5 per cent by 2012. The players in the healthcare industry fully realise that these predictions will come true with harnessing the burgeoning purchasing power of the Indian consumer.