• by Aaron Baar , July 13, 2009

"It's anecdotally and empirically evident," Chip Lister, managing director of market research company Data Development Worldwide, tells Marketing Daily. "There's too much of a tendency [for marketers] to make devices one-size-fits-all. That's not what consumers are feeding back to us about what they want."

According to DDW's Know More survey of U.S. consumers likely to make a mobile device purchase in the next three months, people have a definite set of preferences for what they want their mobile devices to do, and not do. For instance, those interested in purchasing a smartphone were not interested in its online banking capabilities. By the same token, consumers interested in buying an ultralight laptop weren't planning to use it for text messaging.

"The devices should not all be multilateral," Lister says. "There's too much of a tendency to deliver everything in one device."

But even as people consider a broad range of consumer electronics for their next purchase -- the Know More survey showed many different products were up for consideration, from ultra-light laptops to smart phones to full-sized laptops to GPS devices to netbook computers -- electronics marketers need to be aware that the convergence of capabilities could lead to cannibalization across categories.

"The world needs to be open to [convergence], but it shouldn't preclude looking at need statistics," Lister says. "Consumers are not looking for one device to satisfy everything."

While people are looking for versatility in their personal electronics, they're not necessarily looking for one device to accomplish everything. Rather, Lister suggests, marketers of personal electronics may want to determine which capabilities their consumers are looking for and focus on them.

"What are consumers looking for and what makes me different from my competitors," should be the key questions, according to Lister. "The bottom line is, there has to be a clean coupling of demand against fulfillment: What are consumers looking for? And what are you putting into your products."