Acer responds to end users' requests

NEW YORK, USA: In a market in which consumer goods offer increasingly advanced and standardized technologies, a new generation of users is changing consumer rules: emotional consumers.

A PC vendor aimed at gaining share in today’s market must respond to end users’ requests. But how? With a new multi-brand strategy, Acer has been able to set user targets and identify the ideals these users aspire to, and then develop products that reflect their desires and needs.

Emotional users take the technical qualities of their electronic goods for granted. They expect an LCD television, once plugged in, to be able to find available channels and transmit them instantly with bright, vivid colors. Instead, what they don’t take for granted is the affinity between the product and their own aspirations, between the product brand and what they want to be, or how they want to be considered by owning it. Above all, what they buy is the idea that rotates around the product, conjured up by the brand and the visual details they manage to identify themselves with.

While the technical information is essential for rational consumers—such as the engineering of the product's performance and parts—for emotional consumers’ values, history and experience are the plus points that distinguish the goods from other standardized and standardizing ones.

The device’s technical quality is now taken for granted and is not the distinguishing element when making purchase choices. The dynamics that regulate the purchase are increasingly similar to those of any consumer product. The search for affinities between one’s own identity and the identity expressed by the brand is more important than technical information.

Acer has known how to interpret this evolution in the purchasing process from rational to emotional ahead of time, and therefore has introduced a strategy that can generate market growth from the change; identifying the ideals the various user targets aspire to and then developing products that reflect desires and needs.

The first stage of this strategy was based on extensive research and analysis throughout Europe and the US destined to identify various user segments and to understand the reasons that generate purchases, according to the brand and technology drivers, also identifying brand perception.

This study has determined six distinctive user segments:

Techno-leaders and Techno-rationals are real trend setters. They look for innovation and the best performance. They have a complete mastery of technology and are always up-to-date; their primary source for information is the web, which is also their favorite purchase channel.

'Trends & Lifestyle' consumers trust the brand above all. 'Trends' value simplicity and reliability, while 'Lifestyles' are also sensitive to design.

'Conventionals' are influenced by trend setters. They buy the same things as trend setters as long as the brand is known and fulfills basic design criteria.

The 'Simplicity & Value for Money' segment doesn‘t care about brand or design. Technology has to be simple and cheap, with a good price/performance ratio.

The classification of users purchase attitudes has taken Acer into a second stage of its multi-brand strategy: the definition of the brand value propositions, preserving each brand’s identity and personality therefore avoiding any overlap or cannibalization between them.

Acer has found its natural position in the range of Techno-leader and Techno-rational users that identify with a state-of-the-art, innovative brand that can “simplify life through technology.” Gateway in the US and Packard Bell in EMEA, synonyms of style and trends, have found more affinity with a user group that looks for a reliable brand that can offer simple, easy-to-use devices, with which they can identify and acknowledge their own personality. Trends and Lifestyles are the reference segments. Lastly, eMachines is aimed at those who adopt a strictly pragmatic approach and expect that a PC is predominantly an efficient and worthwhile instrument: the Simplicity & Value for Money users.

The definition of the brand identities found in the relative user segments has allowed Acer to complete its multi-brand strategy, revolutionizing the development of its products thus presenting a new product line up with a distinctive look and feel for each brand.

The user will be able to associate a memory to each line, to each curve on the casing, an emotion that will allow him or her to establish an exclusive and unique relationship with the brand and the product itself.