Focus on product quality, not propaganda

The end of the year is at hand; now that Halloween is behind us, it's time to start worrying about Christmas (hey, wasn't there some other holiday about being thankful for things somewhere between those?). This, of course, means that the giant consumerist beast that is the American public is on the prowl once again.

While it's certainly fascinating to see which companies will be the big winners and losers of the holiday season, more interesting to me is the issue of how the public makes their decisions on what to buy. And if there's something I'm learning from the run-up to these "elections," it's that a lot of these decisions are based on completely irrational bases.

One such silly basis is that of the parent company's reputation. This year, the target of the most hate is Sony.

The cause of ire for most consumers was the recent Sony BMG "rootkit" disaster, in which CDs sold by the record label came with DRM (digital rights or restriction management) software. This software, theoretically intended to prevent users from pirating CDs, would automatically install and then "hide" itself on users' PCs when they tried to play them.

Users had no way to remove the software, and experts noted it could be easily exploited. In the end, Sony BMG had to replace all of the "infected" CDs.

What is interesting about the incident is how people assigned blame. Sony owns 50 percent of Sony BMG; the other half is owned by German media company Bertelsmann.

Based on this, one might think people would decide to punish Bertelsmann and boycott CDs from their other music publishing arm, BMG Music Publishing, with which Sony is not involved. Yet this was not the case-consumer ire was directed almost exclusively at Sony. Rather than boycotting a similar product by one of the responsible companies, they gave them a clean slate. And while, say, Sony Ericsson cell phones have nearly no links to Sony BMG, all Sony products got the big "boycott" stamp.

This is pretty much akin to saying you're not going to fly on airplanes with engines manufactured by General Electric because you're upset at the company for NBC (a GE subsidiary) canceling The West Wing.

I am not defending Sony for the many missteps it has been guilty of, like the recent laptop battery recalls. I simply get frustrated with the (in my opinion) unfair criticism the company has been subjected to of late.

On the flipside of Sony are the fanboy darlings of the world. These companies are able to shrug criticism off like pancakes on the Teflon pan of their reputations. Take the example of Apple's recent comments in response to a batch of iPods shipping with a Windows virus preloaded. "As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses," they wrote on their website.

Had this remark come from anyone other than Apple (or a select few other companies), they would have been instantly tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. And indeed, even Apple saw some criticism in coverage of the issue. Yet because the iPod with its white earbuds has become some sort of fashion statement, Apple had a legion of fans defending them and bashing Microsoft all at the same time.

Chances are that this Christmas there will be quite a few people who wind up with iPods who would have been better off with something else (perhaps because they needed some features the iPods lack, perhaps because they could have gotten something just as good for less) simply on the strength of Apple's cult-like following. Meanwhile, the few Sony products that are in fact superior to the competition will be harmed by unjust misperceptions. The ultimate result of these biased purchases will be a decrease in competition, and all consumers will be hurt by that sooner or later.

So as you are shopping for gifts for others, or asking your parents for that shiny new gadget, drop your preconceptions and decide based on how well the product fits what you have in mind. The satisfaction of ending up with the right gadget rather than the most popular one will make it worthwhile.