The Market Segment Conundrum
Hardware companies also tend to try to clearly segment their products into specific market classes. If they guess wrong, a really neat product that’s overpriced won’t do well, no matter how good it is. On the other hand, if you build something that’s just kills the competition, but is priced too low, and the company either leaves money on the table or they risk the dreaded “allocation isssue”, where they can’t make enough.
Then again, artificial segmentation sucks. I’ve seen numerous products that are shoehorned into a particular market segment, sometimes because it didn’t meet performance goals, or sometimes because the company just drinks a little too much of its own kool-aid. And once in awhile, a company doesn’t really understand what they’ve created.
The Reviewer’s Job
The job of a product reviewer is to listen to what marketing and PR tells them, but listen critically. And you never, ever make a final assessment based on what a PR person tells you. If all you can get is a brief, hands-on preview, that needs to be stated up front.
A reviewer also needs to understand the market and the customers in that market. For example, if a new, entry level graphics card ships, it’s performance on high end games may simply suck. But the guy who might plunk down $50 for an entry level GPU isn’t expecting to play Metro 2033 at 2560×1600. Maybe they just want to have good performance from their Blu-ray disks. So the product does not, in fact, suck, if it meets the goals the company sets and does what customers want it to do.
By the same token, as a technology writer gains experience, she starts to recognize when a company might artificially cram a product into the wrong market segment. Even if a piece of gear is the greatest thing ever, if it doesn’t meet the needs and expectations of the person expecting to buy it, then it’s not a good product.
Delicate Dancing
When you get right down to it, the entire review process is a delicate dance, conducted between reviewers, marketing & PR and the readers. When a review is written, there’s an implicit promise that it’s accurate and fair to all parties. Most importantly, of course, are the people who read reviews and will make actual buying decisions.
Over the years, I’ve developed good relationships with most of the PR teams who have read my reviews. When they thank me for a positive review, I tell them not to thank me, but to thank the development team for building something great. But I really know when I’m doing my job well if a PR person tells me a review is fair, even when I’ve been hard on a product they care about deeply.
Not that they would ever say that publicly, of course. But then, that’s part of the dance.
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