While the rest of the world drool over Apple’s new range of iPods, and busily explore their latest music social network ‘Ping’, things are getting slightly heated up over at Taiwan, the center of computer hardware and gadgets, caused by marketing strategy from Gigabyte that mislead some consumers, thus causing some upset and rage issues.

For those who do not understand mandarin, the news report stated that customer saw the 1GB video memory stated on the box-art and bought the new card home, only to find out the physical video memory on the card stated by GPU-Z is 512MB. Obviously, the customer felt con-ed by Gigabyte for such ‘cheap marketing’.

When asking customers on a retail shop to differentiate the two cards that differ TND1,000 ($31), they can’t. Both packaging have nearly identical box-art, with the cheaper one having a small ‘Hyper Memory’ word on it. Many customers who wish to save the TND1,000 opt for the cheaper offer, only to realize the difference when reaching home and powering them up.

When customer that fell for the marketing gimmick brought the matter to the online community, huge debates rage with both campers flaming each other. While some totally blame it on manufacturers for using ‘cheap’ tactics to sell their products, others blame the consumers for not researching into the product and buy blindly.

When contacting Gigabyte regarding the matter, official representative stated that customers who are not happy with the product may return it and they will gladly refund or exchange, as they will barely responsibility fully in regards to the matter. And when being asking about the cheap marketing, they stated that if the public feels that the marketing term used is too small, they will gladly ‘enlarge’ it on the packing for easier reference.
Now, I stand neutral in this war, as we will see both sides (manufacturers and consumers) having their own fault when it comes to such issues.

When we point our fingers to Gigabyte, it is obvious that their marketing strategy isn’t very ethic. It’s true that we will always want the best strategy to push our products fast, but using somewhat ‘unethical’ moves is always not welcome when doing business. Once consumers felt scammed, the reputation of your company will soar. Instead of putting “HD 5670 HyperMemory 1GB GDDR5”, they should’ve stated “HD 5670 512MB GDDR5 (1GB with HyperMemory)”, something in that line. If we look at the sticker on the card, the graphic card was manufactured with 512MB of video memory, and the model’s code was printed on the card itself. Gigabyte went as far as to place a sticker which stated 1GB to cover the obvious 512MB stated on the PCB.

Now, if we point it over to the consumers, it is obvious that customers do not understand the meaning of ‘Hyper Memory’, which is AMD’s graphic technology of ‘borrowing’ your system’s memory to offload the data and reduce stress, when the graphic card is on strain and lacking memory to store. This is a clear lesson to see clearly the words stated on the product before simply buying them. Same case when it comes to HDTV, where many consumers do not know the difference between ‘HD-Ready’ and ‘Full-HD’, and the difference between ‘1080i’ and ‘1080p’. Of kush, consumers will always want a ‘proper’ marketing where they can easily differentiate the products and make up their mind.

But again, I found yet another party that is also to blame: the retailers. Experience tells me that 80-percent of the sales persons in retail shop do not know what they’re say. Many do not even know what ‘Hyper-Threading’ means, thus saying that the Core i7 has 8-cores, yet cannot explain why the box stated that it’s a Quad Core processor. All they know are the speed of the processor, the ram size, and storage. Maybe some other additional stuff but not very technical. This is because most of them are low-wage undergraduates who just finished high-school and part-timing in computer shops, or having internships there while all they study in universities are Microsoft Office and some programming languages. You can barely find a few who actually knows computer terms and their meaning and functions. When sales persons don’t understand the hardware itself, you can’t expect them to educate customers who are also ‘blur’ themselves.

So to conclude, each party needs to improve in their own aspects, in order to solve the controversy. We do not only aim at Gigabyte, but aim at all manufacturers alike, in every field. Time to polish up guys!

[Toms Hardware via Lowyat.net]