BrandIndex: Microsoft's ads effective

Are you kidding? Mac hardware is much more expensive than PC hardware in almost all cases for the same specs. For example, order the best Mac you can possibly get...seriously, get four monitors, max RAM, hard drive space, everything. Then go to Newegg/Tigerdirect and build a PC with equal or better components. The PC will cost less than half of the Mac. I did this...and even used LCD TV's for the monitors on the PC, and it was almost half of the Mac. On top of that, Windows is a much more astute operating system compared to OSX. Wanna actually do stuff? Use Windows. But...but what about Photoshop? Guess what. Windows gets a 64-bit version of Photoshop in CS4. That's...BETTER than the Mac version. Not ridiculously better, I understand, but certainly enough to make the Windows better at Photoshop. It's about time for Apple to actually release decent products before actually standing up to Microsoft beyond Apple's fallacious advertising.

As someone that's been purchasing both Macs and PCs for years I have to snicker a bit every time I read the comments on one of these price vs. value stories.

"Macs are better because they are higher quality."
"You get what you pay for."
"Apple doesn't want customers that shop on price."

In my experience I've had just as many failures on my Macs as my PCs which on average cost significantly less. I can't say performance is much better for the higher margin either. In fact the PCs usually outperform the Macs and they're more expandable. At best, the Macs are better looking.

So let's be honest, why do I pay more for my Macs? Because I love OS X. That's it. Any other perceived value here is brand loyalty clouding your vision.

I get the impression that the people portrayed in these ads are not people that the audience should be actually relating to, but rather the people the audience want to be like. The woman who needs a laptop to edit video, for example, would not convince any actual videographer - because if you work with video, then you know that the cost of the laptop pales in comparison to the cost of the software and video hardware. Further, she would have had some video editing suite to begin with, and this would have limited her choice of platform - not the price or the stock ram or video card.

But MS wasn't speaking to people who actually edit video - they were speaking to people who specifically don't edit video, and hoping those people would think "well, if this machine is good enough for her, then surely it will do what I want it to do!"

Statistically speaking, there is no difference (except for the "Apple spike" at mid-February) in any of the data points; i.e. +/- 1 standard deviation they are essentially the 'same'...

John Ruskin once said:
"It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little.
When you pay too much, you lose a little money — that is all.
When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.
The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot — it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better."

We don't know exactly how that's measured by the survey.

@WS:

Yeah, the point of BrandIndex is to try to get a handle on those irrational snap decisions by trying to tap into the emotional side of people opinions about brands.

It's not a bad thing to do, but I'd be interested to see side-by-side retail sales vs. BrandIndex charts for some well-known brands to find out how they compare over time.

"We don't know exactly how that's measured by the survey."

Then what's the point of writing an article about the "study." If I told you I was ten feet tall, you may ask how I measured myself. If I told you I used oranges, and was told at the grocery store that all oranges were 1 foot in diameter, you may not believe me.

If you don't know the validity and reliability of the measure, the conclusion is meaningless. Unless you are a lay and like to throw out statistics.

People need to start getting smarter when they hear talk of "statistics."

BrandIndex surveys ask very very very general questions and are designed to be a snapshot of mood and impulse rather than anything else.

A participant is generally presented with a list of between twenty and forty brands, and then asked a series of questions where the 'answer' is to tick those brands which they feel are aligned with the question. For example, 'Select all the brands which you feel represent good value for money (note that "value for money" does not necessarily mean "cheap")'

(Yes, they do remind people of that)

So Microsoft paid BrandIndex *how much* to publish this "study"??? Pure hokum, if you ask me!