中國網站品牌欄目（頻道）
作為美國最大的汽車生產商，通用汽車公司曾經代表了美國一代中產階級的追求，但公司卻在2009年迅速垮臺；可同樣接受經濟危機洗禮的蘋果公司和宜家公司，一個馬不停蹄地用高端新品吸引全球目光，一個繼續以價廉物美籠絡顧客，兩家公司的生意都蒸蒸日上。通用破產的背后折射出市場格局的動蕩：一頭是價格高昂的名牌產品，一頭是價格低廉走平民路線的產品，原本作為中流砥柱的中端市場正被不斷侵蝕。
By James Surowiecki
吳凡 選注
Apple’s launch of the iPad is a gamble in more ways than one.[1] To start with, it’s obviously a bet that there are millions of people looking for a new way to surf the Web, watch movies, and read magazines. But it’s also a more fundamental gamble; namely, that people will pay for quality. Starting at five hundred dollars, the iPad is significantly more expensive than its competitors. But Apple’s assumption is that, if the iPad is also significantly better, people will happily shell out for it (as they already do for iPods, iPhones, and Macs).[2] That’s why when Steve Jobs[3] first introduced the iPad he said that, if a product wasn’t “far better” than what was already out there, it had “no reason for being.”
For Apple, which has enjoyed enormous success in recent years, “build it and they will pay” is business as usual. But it’s not a universal business truth. On the contrary, companies like Ikea, H. & M., and the makers of the FlipVideo camera are flourishing not by selling products or services that are “far better” than anyone else’s but by selling things that aren’t bad and cost a lot less.[4] These products are much better than the cheap stuff you used to buy, and they tend to be appealingly styled, but, unlike Apple, the companies aren’t trying to build the best mousetrap out there. Instead, they’re engaged in the “good-enough revolution.” For them, the key to success isn’t excellence. It’s well-priced adequacy.
These two strategies may look completely different, but they have one crucial thing in common: they don’t target the amorphous blob of consumers who make up the middle of the market.[5] Paradoxically, ignoring these people has turned out to be a great way of getting lots of customers, because, in many businesses, high- and low-end producers are taking more and more of the market.[6] In fashion, both H. & M. and Hermès[7] have prospered during the recession. In the auto industry, luxury-car sales, though initially hurt by the downturn, are reemerging as one of the most profitable segments of the market, even as small cars like the Ford Focus are luring consumers into showrooms.[8] And, in the computer business, the Taiwanese company Acer has become a dominant player by making cheap, reasonably good laptops—the reverse of Apple’s premium-price approach.[9]
While the high and low ends are thriving, the middle of the market is in trouble. Previously, successful companies tended to gravitate toward what historians of retail have called the Big Middle,[10] because that’s where most of the customers were. These days, the Big Middle is looking more like “the mushy[11] middle”. The companies there—Sony, Dell, General Motors, and the like—find themselves squeezed from both sides.[12] The products made by midrange companies are neither exceptional enough to justify premium prices nor cheap enough to win over value-conscious consumers.[13] Furthermore, the squeeze is getting tighter every day. Thanks to economies of scale, products that start out mediocre often get better without getting much more expensive—the newest Flip, for instance, shoots in high-def and has four times as much memory as the original—so consumers can trade down without a significant drop in quality.[14] Conversely, economies of scale also allow makers of high-end products to reduce prices without skimping on quality.[15] A top-of-the-line iPod now features video and four times as much storage as it did six years ago,[16] but costs a hundred and fifty dollars less. At the same time, the global market has become so huge that you can occupy a high-end niche[17] and still sell a lot of units. Apple has just 2.2 percent of the world cellphone market, but that means it sold twenty-five million iPhones last year.
The boom in information for consumers has also severely weakened middle-market firms. In the past, these companies were able to charge a premium price because their brands were taken as signals of reasonable quality and reliability. Today, consumers don’t need to rely on shorthand: they have Consumer Reports and CNET and Amazon’s user ratings, and so on, which have made it easier to gauge differences in quality accurately.[18] The result is that brands matter less: a recent survey found that more than sixty percent of consumers think that stores’ generic[19] products are equal in quality to brand-name ones. In effect, the more information people have, the tighter the relationship between quality and price: if you can deliver a product or service that is qualitatively better, you can charge top dollar. But if you can’t deliver the quality you can’t get the price. (Even Apple, after all, couldn’t make Apple TV a hit.)[20]
This doesn’t mean that companies are going to abandon the idea of being all things to all people. If you’re already in the middle of the market, it’s hard to shift focus—as G.M. has discovered. And the allure of a big market share is often hard to resist, even if it doesn’t translate into profits.[21] According to one estimate, Nokia has nearly twenty times Apple’s market share, but the iPhone alone makes almost as much money as all Nokia’s phones combined. But making money by selling moderately good products that are moderately expensive isn’t going to get any easier, which suggests a slight rewrite of the old Highland ballad.[22] You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road, and we’ll both be in Scotland afore[23] the guy in the middle.
Vocabulary
1. iPad: 美國蘋果公司最新推出的平板電腦，定位介于蘋果智能手機和筆記本電腦之間；gamble: 賭博，冒險。
2. shell out: 付（款）；iPod, iphone, Mac: 指iPod音樂播放器、iPone智能手機和蘋果電腦。
3. Steve Jobs: 史蒂夫?喬布斯，蘋果公司首席執行官，蘋果電腦的創始人之一。
4. Ikea: 宜家，瑞典著名家具公司；H. & M.: 瑞典低端時尚品牌；Flip Video camera: 一款輕便價廉的高性能攝像器。此句中Ikea、H. & M.、Flip Video都以產品價廉物美而聞名。
5. paradoxically: 出人意料地，不合常理地；high- and low-end: 高端和低端的。
6. Hermès: 愛馬仕，法國高端時尚品牌，主要產品包括箱包、服裝、香水等。
7. downturn: 經濟衰退；reemerge: 重新出現；segment: 部分；Ford Focus: 福特福克斯，福特公司出產的一款低價家用轎車；lure: 引誘，誘惑；showroom: 展品廳。
8. Acer: 臺灣宏基公司，全球五大個人電腦公司之一；dominant: 占優勢的；resonably: 適當的；reverse: 相反；premium-price: 額外高價。
9. gravitate: 被吸引到；Big Middle: 大規模中間市場，指服務質量、價格等均處于中間狀態的零售市場空間。
10. mushy: 爛糊的，此處形容中間市場不景氣。
11. General Motors: 縮寫為G.. M.，美國通用汽車公司，2009年6月1日申請破產；squeeze: 擠壓。
12. midrange: 中間的；execptional: 優越的，杰出的；justify: 證明……是合理的；value-conscious: 重視實用價值的。
13. economies of scale: 規模經濟；mediocre: 中等的，普通的；shoot: 拍攝；high-def: =high-definition，高清晰；memory: 存儲容量；trade down: 降低消費。
14. conversely: 相反地；skimp: 不夠用心，馬馬虎虎。
15. top-of-the-line: 最高級的；feature: v. 以……為特色。
16. niche: 合適的位置。
17. shorthand: 速記，此處指簡略記下各種產品的特點；Consumer Reports: 美國《消費者報告》雜志，由非盈利性消費者組織協會出版發行，其特點是針對各種品牌產品作出無偏見的調查和提出建議；CNET: 全球領先的科技資訊網站；Amazon’s user ratings: 亞馬遜在線購物網站的用戶打分；gauge: 估計，判斷。
18. generic: 一般的。
19. Apple TV: 一款由蘋果公司生產的數字多媒體機，可將計算機里的多媒體文件由高分辨率寬屏電視機播出；hit: 成功而風行一時的食物。
20. allure: 誘惑力；market share: 市場占有率；translate into: 把……轉化成。
21. moderately: 適度地；suggest: 使想起；Highland: 蘇格蘭高地的；ballad: 民歌，民謠。
22. afore: prep. 在……之前。
（來源：英語學習雜志）
