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Are We Truly Loyal to Microsoft?
Microsoft released its new Vista operating system today, the first major release since Windows XP in 2001. For some, it's big news. A few stores had launch parties at midnight to celebrate, and lines of people (mostly in Silicon Valley) waited to be the first ones to buy it. Microsoft has a huge market share, but are its customers truly loyal, or just out of alternatives? Users, especially corporate users, have basically no choice. So the sales of Vista don't necessarily show the true picture.
It's with consumers where Vista will have to prove its mettle, the BBC News says. A Forrester survey of 50,000 consumers suggests that Microsoft is the consumer brand with the highest number of installations, but also the company with the second-lowest approval rating among its customers. Sooner or later those divergent forces will collide, and companies like Apple will be there to pick up the pieces. Bill Gates and company always talk about product features and new technology, but unless they start talking about a long-term customer strategy (specifically for consumers), they might not hold the corner on the market forever.
What do you think? Are there other companies where "forced loyalty" exists? Do companies care about that if they are making money?
Hi Elizabeth, interesting post, thank you.
I commented yesterday on a very similar topic, about surveying customers after a call with Dell. The customer survey revealed complete loyalty to the "product" even though Dell's service was lacking.
There are probably many reasons for this loyalty, but one of them must be their brand recognition in the market they address. Ultimately, I see that Apple is addressing a different market, one where people want to be seen as different, non-conformists.
Back to surveys though, they don't provide the value they claim and to justify such results based on 50,000 consumers, when there are many millions of deployments is hardly representative, but yet thats how analysts make a living and journalists and consumers lap up the sound bytes provided (not complaining about you specifically) :).
For Microsoft though the battle isn't for the desktop OS anymore, that is already over (in spite of Apples claims to the contrary). Their strategy is intricate, and includes many consumer-based products and services, as well as their enterprise-based products and services. This collection intertwines to ensure greater adoption of each product. However, the collection is under threat in the long-term from the new Google products and others.
As a consumer I'm happy to watch this landscape unfold and pick whichever product meets my needs at the time, and works on my Apple MacBook Pro!