The success stories are easy to remember. While Apple’s iPod is the default choice for playing MP3 audio files, remember the Newton? That was Apple’s attempt at marketing a PDA. Where Apple failed, Palm triumphed with the Palm Pilot, which is now overshadowed by the Blackberry.
Just as any motor vehicle can get us where we want to go, each of these devices performed its intended function. In many cases, the products that failed to catch on in the marketplace were technologically superior compared to the devices that captured the mass pocketbook. Before the DVD, there was the VHS format tape that defeated the Beta platform to deliver video, and everyone acknowledged that Beta was better.
In some cases the battle was won by market savvy or skullduggery. But in the majority, there’s really no explanation that makes sense -- except that consumers made a choice, often based on emotion.
As with technology, the form factor of automobiles affects people more than simply how they feel physically when driving a certain type of vehicle. Equally important is the parallel feedback loop -- how that vehicle is perceived by others influences how people feel emotionally about their vehicle. Compounded by the sheer numbers of the mass market, and either magnified or distored by the media, this emotion gets translated into trends -- often that make no sense -- but which determine the nature of the retail market month after month.
A new trend line is developing in favor of vehicles that get better gas mileage, and to the detriment of larger vehicles, particularly SUVs. Gas prices, which were already on the rise before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita battered the gas production infrastructure of the Gulf Coast, are the seeming cause of this trend.
But that may be too obvious. Trends have natural life cycles, and the hegemony of large SUVs showed signs of crumbling in the early part of this decade. The recent spike in gas prices and the sense of national emergency are emerging as explanatory causes for a phenomenon that was already on the move.
So what we are really witnessing is a battle of form factors -- small, economical vehicles are growing in public esteem, while large SUVs are losing steam. At the same time, there is the other aspect of form factor to consider -- people still desire the visceral experience delivered by a certain type of vehicle.
The obvious contrarian response to the funeral that's being held for SUVs is that people still need vehicles with passenger, storage and hauling capacity. While public opinion and pump price shock will further cool large SUV sales, half the car buying public still needs a form factor that delivers these functions.
Though hybrids are getting the glory press at the moment, in the next six to nine months a new trend may develop -- the rebirth of the station wagon!
The station wagon, of course, is better known today in its repurposed form factors -- the minvan and the crossover.