Path 3:  Looking across the Chain of Buyers and Users

This is a transcript of the conversation that took place.

Mike:  I am going to start with the Chain of Buyers and Users since this is where I certainly got the most comments – by that I mean where I believe the biggest sales opportunity exists – possibly even increasing the size of the market by 30% - I’m not kidding!   By far the most numerous type and the most outspoken people were the parents of potential gamers who told me horror stories about other people’s children spending whole weekends just playing video games.  When they weren’t doing that, they were in front of the television, watching the same programs and re-runs week after week or shut away in their own world listening to music on their MP3!  I didn’t tell them that I was the CEO of Blue Buddies!

These parents said that they faced so many dilemmas – on the one hand, when thinking of gifts for their children “who have everything they want already”, it seemed tempting to take the easy route and buy a “video game machine”, as they put it; on the other hand, how would they be able to control how much time was going to be spent gaming “mindlessly” when homework needed to be done.

David:  I heard very much the same thing, and you are right, most of the people I talked to made these kinds of comments, although a key theme for me was that they did not really want to intrude on their teenagers in their rooms, and yet they wanted to be able to control the amount of time that they spent ‘gaming’.  Since they could not do this, they were not going to buy a video game console.  I really believe if the control issue was sorted out, these noncustomers would become buyers.

Sally:  Exactly, these parents were dead against the way video games can absorb their kids’ ‘childhood hours’.  They said that when their children were supposed to be researching school material on the internet they found them using the internet to play games.  They called these games “inane”, “mindless”, “puerile” – “pushing a few buttons to make things explode on the screen” is how they put it.  They were certainly not going to exacerbate the problem by buying a video gaming console.  They felt that they had lost control over what their children were doing.

Rick:  Yes … quite a few I spoke to either wanted their children to learn to play a musical instrument, or their children were learning one and they are having great difficulty getting the children to put in the minimum practice time that their teachers were pleading for.  When faced with a choice of doing scales and arpeggios and killing the zorgs, the zorgs win out every time!  Zorgs versus Mozart – come on?!

Barb:  I heard a slightly different angle – after a long school day of structured activity, some parents could see the value in children ‘escaping’ into a world that they controlled – it seemed to de-stress them initially, but this was within the first 20 minutes.  After this period, further gaming just seemed to be a mindless waste of time from the parents’ point of view.  Whilst they said that they did not have to face teenagers being revolting and that gaming could be a useful distraction, there should be a way of easily setting limits – even being able to allocate gaming time as a reward mechanism.

Sally:  Hey – what a great idea – I like that one!

Mike:  Another thing that strikes me as we are talking is the number of times parents talked about the ongoing costs

All (together):  Batteries, pollution, global warming!

Mike:  You heard that too!  Mmm … it was not so much the electricity as the cost of buying batteries for the remote controllers. Also the games they found really expensive…

All (together, laughing):  … and they break easily …

Mike:  When you sit or jump on them!

David:  Just to get back to the battery issue – this came up more times than not in conversations.  It seems that this type of person sees electronic goods and especially game consoles in a largely negative light.  One person mentioned that she sees so many discarded electronic goods at the garbage dump and believes that PC boards take “1000 years to decay”!  Many mentioned the cost and environmental impact of batteries which were not rechargeable.

Rick:  I agree with David – this was a strong theme for the people I listened to.

Mike:  Thanks, David, Rick … this issue seems to be emerging as a strong theme … to get back to the games disks which snapped … I heard this more times than not.

Barb:  Yes … quite a few of the people I listed to said that they had bought a favorite DVD more than twice since disks lie around under discarded clothes and get trampled.  Children don’t seem to want to put the discs back into the box they came from …

Rick: …  I know a lot of adults who don’t either!

All:  (chuckle)

Sally:  I remember being shown by this really nice couple their son’s room - it was a complete mess and there were CDs and DVDs everywhere – you couldn’t tell which was which.  In the overflowing paper trash can there were splintered fragments of a compact disc.  One more thing, what struck me about this type of noncustomer was that their TV was always about ten to fifteen years’ old …

Barb:  It’s funny that you mention that, Sal, I was just about to say the same thing – EVERYTHING electronic was really dated.  These people just didn’t seem to care about technology at all … I saw a 70’s all-in-one “Hi-Fi” in one family’s house that they obviously use for their music since there were LP records lying out of their covers.  It was so retro.

Rick:  Yes – I saw many VCRs and very few DVD players – far less a DVD recorded …

David:  (laughing) … I asked one couple and their son if they were thinking of buying a Blue Ray and they said they weren’t into keeping fish.  They thought I was weird.

Barb:  You are a bit weird, David!

Mike:  Can I get back to the battery charger issue - do we make accessories ourselves – like battery recharging kits and CD storage units?

David:  We don’t, Mike – we source those from the Far East – but we’ve had so many problems in the past with this kind of thing – it seems we are such a ‘family’ type of organization that we find it difficult to get outside organizations to understand what we want and to deliver on time the right thing.  Maybe I am being too kind to our people!

Sally:  I’d say you were … we are more than a bit sloppy …

Barb: … and too nice, if you know what I mean.

Rick:  Well, we have a good reputation in the industry and the family stood for never ripping another organization off

Mike:  That’s all well and good, but …

Sally:  … a big ‘but’ I’d say.  Anyway, we always seem to be a day late and a dollar short when it comes to working with others and we often end up being let down.  We have tried to fix this attitude in our people many times but it just seems too deeply ingrained.

Rick:  Console technology we can do … but other stuff …

(An awkward silence)

David:  We hear you Mike – we shouldn’t let our internal capabilities let us down in terms of where any future Blue Ocean may lie.

Mike:  Thanks, David – you are right – we are going to have to make this kind of change in our thinking and the way we work if we are going to make competitors irrelevant.  OK – moving on then … what strikes me is that games are three times the cost of a movie DVD – they felt that it was a rip-off.  I think we should ask the developers to make the games longer and then the price wouldn’t be so bad!  If you think how long it takes to go through a game versus the time it takes to watch a movie, then the price doesn’t seem to be so bad.

Sally, Rick, Barb:  OK/Mmm/Yes

Rick:  I’ll make a note of that – especially to our in-house development crew.  I believe that they are trying to sort out their development process and halve the time it takes to develop a game – there’s no reason why they cannot invest some of this saved time in extending the games to give better value for money.

David:  Yes – and about the batteries thing – many realize that these are environmentally unfriendly to throw away.

Rick:  A few of those I had talked to had already bought re-chargers and a set of re-chargeable batteries – a bit of a hassle, really.  Quite a few had bad experiences with rechargeable batteries because they had to run them completely flat before recharging and that was a hassle.

Mike:  OK – does that capture what we heard from Path 3?

David:  Most of my interviewees complained about the high cost of the video game equipment – even for a major birthday or for a real achievement at school – this really put them off buying one.

Sally/Rick (nodding in agreement):  Mmm …

Barb:  Yes

David:  Oh … one other interesting thing – a number of people I spoke to about how they used ‘screen’ entertainment – computers, television etcetera - said that although there were a few people living in the house, they seemed to live separate lives and that the only common factor was that most switched on the television when they came in.  Then this one really interesting man – an inventor – started talking about having a way of leaving messages for the family which would appear once they turned the television on – then he would know for certain that they had got the message.  Leaving post-it notes stuck to the fridge no longer worked since there were too many there and they were often not removed.  He said it would be neat if he could see how long the message had been displayed, then he knew whether it had been read or not!

Barb:  One of the young men I spoke to said that he wished that all the televisions in the house were connected so that he could move freely from room to room with his controller without having to break his game.

Mike:  Interesting idea – it’s technically possible.

David:  It is – I’ll think about that one.

Barb:  Oh, before I forget, two of the twelve people I listened to talked about how ugly game consoles were.  They said you couldn’t tell what it was – it looked like an electric heater.

Mike:  Ok – I guess if we could crack some of these issues we could really lift sales.  Growing profits is going to mean eliminating and reducing simultaneously.  We should focus on the key themes … if we focus, I think that this type of noncustomer on their own could offer us a great Blue Ocean opportunity.