I'd argue there's still some interesting math going on there.
PC hardware is still very much an industry of "I'll ask the enthusiast kid down the street what to buy"-- the sort of business where souring a small number of power users can blow back with a lot of lost mainstream consumer sales.
Do they assume that the "enthusiast kid down the street" is already a lost cause and figure he's never even going to buy a HP printer, let alone express his dismay about it to all his friends?
I’d wager that 10x more printer decisions are advised by “whoever is wearing a Staples shirt that day” than by an “enthusiast kid I know”.
Regular people don’t want to research a printer; they want printed pages. If that means buying a $100+ OEM cartridge every so often, that’s what it costs and they don’t think much more about it.
> PC hardware is still very much an industry of "I'll ask the enthusiast kid down the street what to buy"
I don't think that applies to HP, and suspect that most of their customer base are big businesses who prefer business type reasons for their purchasing decisions
PC hardware is still very much an industry of "I'll ask the enthusiast kid down the street what to buy"-- the sort of business where souring a small number of power users can blow back with a lot of lost mainstream consumer sales.
Do they assume that the "enthusiast kid down the street" is already a lost cause and figure he's never even going to buy a HP printer, let alone express his dismay about it to all his friends?