Creeping Features: A Love/Hate Relationship
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but does anyone else have a keen interest in those cell phones with big numbers, few features and a $10/month plan? Jitterbug is the name of one manufacturer you may want to check out. Then again, perhaps their core market is just me and everyone older than 65.
Anyway -
James Surowiecki wrote a great piece (reg. required) in the May 28th issue of The New Yorker about today’s tech products, especially cell phones, and feature creep. He points out that more and more features don’t necessarily add up to progress, in that it costs consumer’s time and it costs businesses money, as well. To wit:
"Product returns in the U.S. cost a hundred billion dollars a year, and a recent study by Elke den Ouden, of Philips Electronics, found that at least half of returned products have nothing wrong with them. Consumers just couldn’t figure out how to use them."
Consider the way I accidentally put on my phone’s "speaker" feature during a vacation trip last summer, and could not, for the life of me, figure out how to turn it off. Of course, it was a matter of holding the button down for some extended period – but I, like many, have zero patience for such things.
But, I digress. Surowiecki goes on to write how the average consumer may tend to find the idea of more features attractive at the store, but, put into use, the attraction fades. He points out that people are not good at predicting what will make them happy in the future (for more on this – Daniel Gilbert’s new book, Stumbling On Happiness, is a great read). A few other more specific reasons we buy things we think we’ll like and then don’t actually use:
- For golf balls and digital cameras (as per a study by Katherine A. Burson of the University of Michigan), "we generally do a poor job of evaluating our skills, and so get stuck with unsuitable products." Say it isn’t so…
- We don’t mind paying for extras, since we want to keep up with the Jones’s or we will feel like we missed out if we don’t have them. (How confused was the guy at the local Verizon store, for instance, when I insisted I didn’t want the camera-phone version, even if it was a "screaming deal"…)
- As Surowiecki notes, we tend to "systematically overestimate how often we’ll use them" (the features).
So, brands can try to make simplicity a selling point – Surowiecki cited Philips for its "Sense and Simplicity" campaign (which I have always loved), for one. But, that can backfire too. As he put it in his closing sentence:
"The strange truth about feature creep is that even when you give consumers what they want they can still end up hating you for it."
Argh.
My quick women’s market take: there is a reason a lot of women tend to wait for later models of new technology. We figure the manufacturers will iron out some of the ridiculousness by then. That doesn’t always end up being the case, but we continue to hope. Who wants to form a Jitterbug club?
