Well I started to think about how would all these problems be solved: feedback loop for finding real market demand without making consumers beta testers (I didn't quite solve this one below unfortunately); Ability for the market to make proper judgement - a real comparison in the final usage conditions with a feedback mechanism to design & manufacturer, all before final purchase happens.
It's certainly interesting to think what effect does it have on the market to specify minimum requirements. Does it drive the manufacturers to produce something at the specified minimum if that's the lowest cost also? The old school way of doing things is a demand test: You produce various types of things and see what gets bought then produce more of those. The problem with this by my guess mainly setup costs and time of all sort of advanced facilities required to produce tablets and panels. Since real choices will be few, the actual demand remains a question. The Ipad aspect ratio maybe "market tested" like I said but it's not tested quite properly since there are big confounding variables. Then again, the focus groups may say they want a "better horse" (and someone would produce those) but when given a car and a better horse they'd pick the car.
You have to both see how it works, handles and looks (for display panels) in person to make proper judgement. For small retailers this could be big burden since, one customer "should" technically be able to order every item in the shop and return all but (one per comparison category or just one if there's no categories) for free. (Also "demo in retail shop with good service, return & buy from cheap internet shop" issue - below I'll detail a system which should solve this issue) - As much as I like consumers rights, that is not really practical. The shops should be for making the final purchase. There should be a system which allows something equal to "test driving various car models".
The middle men between the retail and the manufacturing could take this role of supplying and refurbishing demo units efficiently (and taking the demo units out of circulation if there was a feedback of a problem in a unit, they wouldn't have to test them at all). So the cost of the ability to properly demo & compare at home should fall equally to all purchase channels.
There needs to be a demand based supply of demo units that are in "almost like new" condition. One should be able to do a comprehensive comparison without fronting money for every the test subject (in a demo subject group). (eg. you'd pay full retail for the most expensive unit in the demo group + s&h, and get the other demo units - after compare you'd return all of them and get all money except the demo group s&h cost, which would be returned to you if you buy one of the units (with a normal single unit s&h. I'll repeat this again in other words below.)
For displays you really need to see atleast two at once to make proper comparison and in the final lighting conditions rather than the retail shop lighting. Of course equally, the demo shipments need to be tracked & delivery authenticated and if one doesn't return the demo units there should be methods to deal with that. (eg. if you could have max 5 demo units at home at once from a national demo unit distributor, just having them ban you from receiving further demo units until you return those would be quite big incentive to return the demo units properly. However the shipping fees for this system could be a problem. There may need to be a system where you pay upfront ship & handling fee for the demo units which will be returned to you if you permanently buy any of the models you are comparing. So in the end, you pay just single shipping & handling fee and it won't be for the demo units - this means that part of the demo shipping cost may have to be split between the final purchase shipping cost (retail pays to distributor) and the "all demo units returned and no purchase made" fee which will be larger & enough to stop people who might like to abuse the system.
So what is the problem with this "great system" ?
It could lead to worsening return rights for "final purchase" units unless those are regulated by law. - Bad when there might be differences between the demo units and the brand new ones.. To avoid this, the return rights outside the demo system need to still exist and additionally, you should be able to buy a unit from the demo group (which might or might not be used) if you don't want to bother testing a brand new unit again. (eg. you might have got a pixel defect free demo display but then return it and got a display with pixel defect for the final purchase). edit: There may need to be a disincentive to coax people from using the normal return system for things that the "demo units from distributor" system is for.
In some large retailers, you may already have ability to do things like this, but such ability is also a large barrier to entry for competitors, leading to consolidation and one shop per country/continent that has the volumes to be able to do such things while being still competitive on the price. This type of great service is not cost competitive to do in small shops with small volumes. Currently this fact is seen simply as a much worse service - I can't get all the units I want for simultaneous comparison and then good luck trying to return fully used (even if used for just few days) unit to the shops - they have to ship them back somewhere. The system I propose shifts all consumers to extensively demo units before paying anything to manufacturer instead of "buy and regret later" - most shops I know have no good feedback back to product design. Newegg probably has the best I've seen since there's representatives reading the reviews. I want ALL shops to have this ability globally and it should be feasible for even smallest shops to get demo unit orders without the shop getting burdened with returns.
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