Authenticate or Innovate? The Perceived Fairness Doctrine

In marketing parlance, value is defined as the perception that creates a customer and helps build brand loyalty for a company. Academics reduce the concept of value to an equation: Value = Benefit - Price. An important component of value, often overlooked by businesses, is the perceived fairness of the purchase transaction. Simply put, if customers sense that the price of an item has been manipulated, they are either less likely to buy it or will not be repeat customers.

In the technology sector, some electronics manufacturers are starting to use digital authentication in a way that can cause customers to question the value of their products. Think of digital authentication as a process similar to the one performed every time you insert a card "key" at the hotel to unlock the door to your room.

Consumer electronics manufacturers like Apple, Sony, and Microsoft can use authentication technology to "authenticate" virtually anything that is attached to their mainstay products. Ostensibly, this is done to protect customers by requiring OEM products to meet the major players' engineering specifications or to safeguard intellectual property. But it seems that the technology can also be used to "tax" complementary product manufacturers thereby creating perceived price manipulation in the minds of customers.

Getting "Zuned"

A case in point is the MP3 player and the growing use of authentication software. A couple of years ago, I contacted the Microsoft manager in charge of third-party licensing for the soon-to-be announced Zune music player. I was calling Microsoft to obtain OEM hardware specifications for the Zune player so that our company could make accessories to attach to the Zune. The Microsoft manager was excited at the prospect of taking on Apple's iPod with the new Zune.

Beyond the Zune's new music features, it was going to be different from the iPod in another important way. The Zune would not repeat Apple's mistake of not requiring third-party device manufacturers to authenticate accessories that could be attached to the iPod. The Zune, by contrast, had built-in authentication capability that would render certain accessory devices, like chargers or cables, unusable unless the OEM first obtained a license from Microsoft.

Fast forward to today and it appears that now Apple, starting with its new diminutive iPod shuffle, has adopted the same approach with regard to accessory manufacturers. Only time will tell, but Apple may soon discover that it is creating the perception of price manipulation for its iPod Shuffle player.You can read more about the growing discussion on this subject in a Cnet story
http://news.cnet.com/report-ipod-shuffle-accessories-to-get-apple-tax/.

That Soft Drink Will Cost More on a Hot Day

Another somewhat more egregious example of how technology may be used to negatively affect the customer's perception of value was an "instrumented" soft drink vending machine that I viewed at a development lab a few years back. The vending machine looked like any other you've seen with one additional capability; it was equipped with an outdoor temperature sensor. This allowed the machine to be programmed to increase the price of the can of Coke or Pepsi based on the outside temperature. In other words you'd pay a higher price for the same can of soda on a hot day.

Looking at it from a strictly business standpoint, the technology made it possible to apply the law of supply and demand to an automated vending machine. But you can't help wondering how customers would react had they known of the vending machine's variable pricing capability.

Keeping Customer Loyalty

Manufacturers need to be mindful that today they operate in a "smart market" environment. Consumers know much more about products and their associated value than ever before. Isn't it is far better for companies to innovate and differentiate market making products than to use technology like authentication and instrumentation in a way that can leave customers feeling they are being manipulated into paying more?

Ultimately, it's about gaining and keeping loyal customers and establishing a personal relationship between the customer and the brand. In the Internet age, avoiding the perception of price manipulation is more important than ever.

Copyright: F.A. Daniels, April 30, 2009, all rights reserved.

You Talk, It Types?

Mondegreen

Last year a new word was added to the English lexicon mondegreen. Wikipedia defines it as: "the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase, typically a standardized phrase such as a line in a poem or a lyric in a song, due to near homophony, in a way that yields a new meaning to the phrase."

Here are some examples in song lyrics:

"There's a bathroom on the right" (the line at the end of each verse of "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival: "There's a bad moon on the rise")

"The ants are my friends " (from a lyric in the song "Blow' n in the Wind" , by Bob Dylan: "'The answer my friends").

Voice Dictation Finally Gets It Right

When you consider how easy it is for the average person to misinterpret what they hear and inadvertently give it a whole new meaning, just think of how extremely challenging it is for a machine to capture what you say and accurately convert it into a written word or phrase.

IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center began developing computer speech technology as early as the 1960's. I have long been a fan of voice dictation. I used the early version of IBM's product, ViaVoice, back in the 1990s when it was still being perfected. As personal computers became more powerful, voice dictation started to migrate from room-sized mainframes to desktop computers and eventually to laptops. Early PC-based voice dictation systems were commonly referred to as processor "hogs" due to the fact that they would burden any Intel 386/486-class processor to the point of slowing the computer to a crawl. They also contributed to many appearances of Microsoft Window's "blue screen of death" computer crash.

We've Come a Long Way

Modern voice dictation systems like Dragon Software's NaturallySpeaking 10.0 are finally delivering on the promise of accurate and responsive voice dictation.
If you're like me and dread typing multi-page documents or you can't even type the word "nirvana" wrong so that Microsoft Word will give you a choice to correct it with the right spelling, just saying "nirvana" into NaturallySpeaking 10.0 and having it magically appear in your sentence with its correct spelling is like, well, nirvana!

So here I am writing this blog posting with my voice. How accurate is it? Based on personal experience, it's at least 95% accurate. It all depends on your processor speed, the amount of memory you have available, and how much training of the system you've done. Training the system is accomplished by reading sample stories aloud during the software setup process and later as needed to increase accuracy.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10.0 and IBM ViaVoice are published by Nuance, a company located in the Boston area. Their products are currently available only on the PC platform, but there are other companies making versions for the Mac. A new laptop notebook or netbook is more than capable of giving you responsive and accurate voice typing capability.

What I Love About It

My current choice is Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10.0 Preferred Edition which includes a Plantronics Bluetooth wireless headset and adapter for use with a laptop computer. The wireless headset frees you from the uncomfortable and weighty wired versions that can often get in your way especially when using a laptop. You can also use this Bluetooth headset your with cell phone when you're not using it for voice dictation.

One major additional benefit with voice dictation software is the capability of most voice dictation software to read back aloud, albeit in a computer voice, what you have typed or dictated. This is extremely useful when writing anything that may contain words that look closely alike but have completely different meanings. For example, thanks to voice dictation software that proofread aloud some advertising copy, I was able to catch what could have been an embarrassing mistake interchanging soup "bowels" for soup bowls.

Cut Me Some Slack, and I'll Give You Some Time Back

We know that mishearing and misinterpreting spoken words is common among humans and is now even defined by a new word. Given that, isn't it time to have realistic expectations of the capabilities of a computer listening to your voice and typing words? Keeping that in mind, you can use voice dictation very effectively to "type," that is, if you don't mind a little real typing and editing to go along with the speaking. When all is said and done, using your voice to type translates into productivity that can help you get some of your precious time back.

Early Stage Tech Products Coming To You Soon

As a long time member of Consumer Electronis Association (CEA) I had the rare opportunity to attend the i-Stage or early stage new product competition last October in Las Vegas.

Below is a brief description of three of the most interesting new product ideas presented at the CEA Forum. These are as follows:

Amulet Devices- voice command media remote

The voice controlled Amulet remote was interesting however wasn't without its glitches including its inability to recognize certain of the user's voice commands. We were told that this was due to the noise level in the room. The most interesting feature was the ability of the remote to automatically skip all commercials simply by saying “skip commercials.”

Promotion Display & Technology (PDT)- 3-D Webcam

The 3-D Webcam demonstration at first seemed more about a novelty device than a serious consumer product. The company, PDT, said that it is bringing the product to market at a $69 price point and is working with Disney and other companies to joint market the camera. Their entire pitch centered on how their 3D webcam experience compares favorably with seeing Viewmaster images. They also showed 3-D video that had been uploaded to YouTube.

The 3-D webcam spokesperson pointed out that the 3-D wave is hot again with some Blu-Ray DVDs now packaged with 3-D glasses. Judging by the audience response to the PDT presentation, 3-D Webcams may have a sustainable market niche.. The technology still requires the red and green 3-D glasses. Nonetheless, the demo was fun to watch and PDT was voted as the audience favorite at the conference even though the $50,000 judges prize went to a another contestant, social networking start-up Boxee.

Lightglove-wrist mounted gesture pointing device

The final product demonstration that piqued my interest was the Lightglove wrist mounted pointing device. Demonstrations of playing an "Air-Piano" using only fingertip gestures looked quite amazing. Product images were not available. I believe this product is very promising with no lesser company than Monster Cable sponsoring the presentation.

More information about these products is available at the following URLs:

http://www.amuletdevices.com/

http://www.ptuk.com/

http://www.lightglove.com/