www.endgadget.com

A slightly mixed bag of apathy and support for the new product.  So are we looking at declining brand loyalty, brand substitution or what?  What's that mean anyway? Well, consumers are more versatile and less loyal than ever.  Forget the lemming, Gladwell tipping point philosophy. Those days are numbered, without a doubt.  This is about bottom up where the consumer is making more of the power decisions than ever.  Consumer behaviorists are talking about something now called ‘choice repertoire’.  This hot new buzz terms describes the fact that Joe Consumer can no longer be identified by a brand, but rather by a set of brands he or she will choose, with a specific probability, within the same product category.  That just means that brands will have to probably become even better at seduction and offering up some additional goodies (listening Apple?) to retain market power.  We'll be tracking this one.  In the meantime, wondering how many tablets got damaged during Sandy in NYC?  Thoughts are def with our NY and NJ readers in particular due to the damage there!!!

We've only just begun to see the tip of the iceberg in Tablet entrants, but one thing is sure - the tech-minded make no bones about which companies and systems they are behind.  Only time will tell if consumers will really be checking for Surface.  Funny that the same week Microsoft makes this announcement, a study is released that says that consumers want more ad-supported Tablet apps (so that they don't have to pay for them). In the era of bottom up, rather than top down, how will companies manage to stay on top of consumer needs when consumers are actually outpacing the ad agencies, etc. that actually used to dictate to them?  Interesting to watch!