Evaluation Pains

The Indian Online shopper is an unfortunate one for now.
Poor customer is bombarded with offer, advertisements and choices - of both products and the sellers
He does seem to have a lot of options for "what" to buy and from "where" to buy.










This is where the customer has been abandoned heartlessly by one and all.This is how the marketing God Kotler defined the buying process. Evaluation of alternatives is a precondition too purchase.

Before the customer reaches the buying stage, he needs to decide "what to buy" and "where to buy it from".

He gets no help in evaluating the products. The compare features available on many sites are greek and latin to customers who DO NOt understand the implications of the specifications he is being forced to go through. How many laptop buyers understand the difference between Dual-core, Quad core, Intel Core i3 and how the difference affect them. Or which washing machine buyer knows about what RPM is suitable  or how many wahs programs are more than enough.
They are all defined by the seller, because this is how a seller/ manufacturer looks at his wares, but this is not how the customer sees them. For him, a good computer has good battery backup and a good washing machine, cleans clothes without consuming too much energy or water.

Basically, what is missing is a space where customer needs can be translated into product specifications.So right now the customer has numerous options in front of him, but no way to take a good decision, unless he educates himself on the product category. This in today's scenario is a whole lot of effort with little use, as the knowledge he gains is put to limited use(one product purchase) and is obsolete after a few months as the technology changes so fast that by the time he comes back to buying that product again, he will have to relearn everything. not to mention, its a lot of effort as there are numerous options.

Many such websites/knowledge base exits for more developed countries, like Consumer Reports and consumer search etc. Indian markets are evolving, and I am sure systems and sites will emerge that will do precisely the same. The increased activity on the Indian e-commerce space will trigger these enablers to come in effect, which in turn will boost the space further.

Traversing the choice maze

I needed to buy a laptop, very basic, very functional - something that would just work and work for long. So I need something with good battery backup and good processor. Graphics is not a priority as I am not into gaming nor is the looks. I do not have a brand preference, but of course good service is important.

With this requirement in mind, I set out on my search to find a suitable laptop for myself.

Now there is no single place where I can give these parameters, and someone who would understand what is it that I am looking for and give me a few options from which I can choose from.  In the present scenario, it is up to me to understand what my requirement are. So, I decided to just go to flipkart to see what is available. This is what I found:

509 results are available on Flipkart website, Okay, so I have to find one out of these.

I take a look at the options I could shortlist them on 12 parameters. Great!! This should be good, I thought, until I realized that I do not understand a bit about some of these new options that are available now, and for some I don’t care.

     

Okay, so first is brand, I am quite neutral about that, I do not want to miss on any good product on this criteria, so let’s skip this one for now.

Next is type- notebook, netbook, ultabook and tablet, now what the heck are these ultra books and netbooks. I know I don’t want tablet, but what do I do next. Well, lets skip this one too for now.

Price, okay this should be easy, I am open to all options below 40K, but I do not have an option of choosing that. I can either look at below 35K options or between 35K and 45K. The system does not let me specify this. Well, I select below 35K.

Usage – home or business? I am a self employed person and I plan to use this laptop for work and for entertainment. Skip this too.

Now, it comes to lifestyle – how am I supposed to distinguish between everyday use and entertainment. What is everyday use when we talk about laptops? Next option is processing – heck! Aren’t all laptops supposed to be processing? Super confused again, skip this one too.

Processor, ha ha, you guessed it, clueless again. Let me leave this step too.

System memory, Okay, I understand this to be the RAM, and programs these days need a lot of RAM. I want to select anything above and including 4 GB. In the price range I specified, 4GB is the max I get, alteast one decision is made simple.

Dedicated memory graphics and dedicated memory, I don’t care.

Screen, well let’s take atleast 15 inches. And OS is not an issue; I think I can handle that.

 Hard disk should be minimum 500 GB, but the site does not give me option to select like this. So I just select 500GB.

Not bad, I have 19 laptops now to select from, even with my minimum knowledge. I wonder who uses all these filter criteria.

Next I look through the ratings. The analyst in me wakes up and I select laptops with more number of ratings to go through them in detail. Suddenly I noticed that the once I am selecting are out of stock. Well, I kick them out too, and I am left with the final 12.

I went through the complete configurations, read the rave (and often long) reviews, and then looked through google to find answers to so many other questions. 

What about the choices that I did not make, should I go in for a particular/high end processor so that my laptop remains useful for next 4 years at least? Should I pay attention to graphics? What about the battery backup, it shows the same standard 3 hours for all products. And service, major customer concern is not answered anywhere.

After going through some posts like these, I think I will go with the first laptop on flipkart, with most comments. Though I am yet to figure out how is the service and how to avail it if I buy a laptop online.

Some other articles looked like they were selling some other laptop more than reviews current one.

After some comparisons and lot of search, I think Asus is the way to go.

Imagine spending 3 hours to find a laptop.

Part 2 of the trouble began when I tried to find some sellers of this product.

Price comparison site :  mysmartprice.com does not list this product

Indiatimes shopping did not stock this product.

Junglee provided me with just one seller gadgets guru.

Homeshop 18 shows me the same product with the slightly different name.

The rave reviews I was seeing all over have vanished. Each site I visit confuses me with more options.

how is an ordinary buyer supposed to make his buying decisions. The selection criteria are specified keeping the seller in mind, and not the buyer. The whole online shopping and convenience and availability of options is complicating our decisions instead of making things easier.  Would it not be easy if someone could understand requirements from my perspective and then show me the products available?