On April 2, 2014 at 20:29, bcf1963 said...
The issue, is that you are assuming most of the US, are like your customers. Your customer is not "Joe Average Six Pack". My relatives who still have an old 25" console TV, have a Roku attached to their computer. The average person in the US knows more about AppleTV, Roku, etc, than they know about CI's.
I think you're confused as to what I do. I work for a manufacturer, so my customer is the CI, not the end user. Having said that, most of the people I know personally wouldn't be a target customer for this market, but they do qualify as being a part of "the masses". It's just an interesting way to gauge the level of awareness there is about this industry, and I find almost all of them to be completely ignorant about it.
I think this industry is doing a poor job of communicating to customers. Most of my relatives think that a CI is the guy from Best Buy who puts a TV mount on the wall, and hangs the TV.
Agreed
For example the CEDIA website, which is meant to siphon users to CEDIA installers, makes it difficult for customers who make it to their website, to figure out where to go. When they do, they don't really do a good job of selling why to choose a CEDIA installer. At least they have updated the website, and now finding links to CEDIA installers by zip code works well. Baby steps I guess.
I've never in my life come across someone outside of this industry who's ever even heard of CEDIA, which probably says a lot in and of itself.
Hope you don't take my comments as negative toward installers. Many people could use the service of a CI, and just don't know where to go to find a good one. Also, the ability to weed the good from the bad, is really hard, as most customers don't know how this should be done.
Not at all...especially since I'm not an installer:-) I agree though. I think a lot of people's perception of trying to find a CI is similar to walking in a high-end stereo shop, and there's so much more to it than that.
