Study Says Consumers Are Dissatisfied With Netbooks
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They found, through the analysis of 20,000 online opinions, that “consumer advocacy for the netbook category lags behind consumer advocacy for all laptops.” They used Opinion Insights, a program used to analyze social media, as a primary tool for measuring consumer advocacy.
What they found is that netbooks have 40 percent lower ‘Net Advocacy’ than laptops. ‘Net Advocacy’, as measured by the company, is a “proprietary metric that factors the positive and negative sentiment of individual comments, as well as the impact of the source of each comment, to yield an indicator of a product or brand’s referral value in the marketplace.” We still aren’t sure how successful they are at quantifying that, but I’ll buy the idea: consumers’ sentiments concerning netbooks are more negative than their sentiments for laptops. The study also found that “performance, display, and features/accessories” were the most important-ranked attributes for consumers in their reviews.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean what it appears to. While consumers may be more dissatisfied with netbooks, we’ve found in the past that netbooks are often misunderstood by the uninformed. Many confuse netbooks a mini DVD players or small laptops, and consequently find themselves with a product they didn’t expect.
This explains the first two points made by Biz360, as well as a third: “While performance is the #1 attribute driving laptop advocacy, the performance Net Advocacy for the Netbooks product category is predominantly negative.” All this really means is that people are expecting a smaller high-powered machine, misunderstanding that netbooks are built to be quick and easy but also have little capacity for content creation.
Interestingly enough, Acer – the biggest netbook seller of 2008 – supposedly had the lowest net advocacy. According to Biz360, “Acer’s Aspire One series, like almost all Netbooks, is regarded by the majority of their new owners as not technically performing up to their expectations.”
Stephen Foster, senior director of analyst services at Biz360, seemed to understand the source of their measured dissatisfaction. “The results of the social media analysis indicate that there is a lot of opportunity for improvement across the board for Netbook products,” he said. “Netbook manufacturers also face a significant challenge with consumers whose expectations are based on years of desktop PC usage.”
The study’s findings are interesting and shocking, but it’s impossible to ignore a few flaws to their analysis. While their numbers are convincing, the percentages calculated are based on “Net Advocacy”, a concept of their invention. They derive their statistics from a very subjective concept, the opinions of consumers. This is reflected in the name of the program they used: Opinion Insights.
Biz360 may very well have hit on something key here, but chances are they’re delivering vague numbers with little bearing on the reality of netbooks.
Don’t take my word for it though – check it out for yourself. Biz360 is extending interested parties the email address of a team member for questions. The address is that of Tamairah Boleyn at tam.boleyn@biz360.com. Biz360 will also be reviewing the findings of the study “via a consumer electronics industry webcast on January 22 at 11:00 AM PT.” Event access information can be found at their website, Biz360.com.
Via BusinessWire.
