TV Survey: Consumer Misconceptions Abound
By Staff -- TWICE, 6/2/2008
ODESSA, FLA. — Two-thirds of shoppers would rather buy an LCD than a plasma TV, but that many consumers are carrying some misconceptions that manufacturers may want to correct.
That is one of the results of a recent consumer survey of buying preferences and attitudes conducted by audio/video market research firm TFC Info.
Among the most important factors influencing many shoppers' buying decisions is product longevity, TFC Info's "Flat Panel End User Survey: LCD vs. Plasma 2008," revealed.
The researchers discovered that "manufacturers seem to be giving these shoppers too much credit for their knowledge of display technologies, especially with regard to product lifetime. The results showed clearly that manufacturers do not use the kind of language that the average shoppers leverage in buying decisions."
More than half of the surveyed flat-panel purchasers said that flat-panel technology has an expected product life of five years, not realizing that the lifetime of both LCD and plasma displays will often exceed this with normal viewing, TFC said.
"Since so many respondents placed high importance on product lifetime, it would be advantageous for manufacturers of flat-screen displays to address this misconception and confusion regarding lifetime of these displays in different terms," TFC said in its report.
The report also found that manufacturers may not be giving shoppers enough credit in their purchase decisions pertaining to price. Although price is important to shoppers, the number of current and future flat panel purchasers who rated price as most important was not as high as many believed, TFC said.
"Flat-panel purchasers are not as price sensitive as many put them down to be. LCD panels have been gaining market-share against plasma even in sizes where plasma had the price advantage," stated Tanya Lippke, TFC Info Manager of Survey Market Research. "Although displays must be within a competitive price range for their size and resolution to be considered, clearly within that range customers are choosing technologies based on other factors and have not been picking the lowest-priced display."
Respondents were surveyed on important buying factors, and price did not even make the coveted top three.
Key Factors In Purchasing A TV| Factors rated very important by flat-panel purchasers | |
| Picture quality | 97.5% |
| Reliability | 95.5% |
| Longer product life | 91.3% |
| Screen size | 90.8% |
| Price | 87.8% |
| Importance of longer product life to flat-panel purchasers | |
| Extremely important | 62.8% |
| Very important | 28.5% |
| Undecided/Not sure | 7.5% |
| Not very important | 0.3% |
| Not at all important | 1.0% |
| Source: TFC Info (www.tfcinfo.com) © TWICE 2008 | |
No related content found.
VIEW ALL GALLERIES