What High End Manufacturers Could Learn From Bose


In the high end community Bose gets no respect. The fact is they don't deserve our respect - Bose does not make a particularly good sounding product and they're over priced. Yet at the same time, there is much the high end could learn from Bose. The concept is marketing. Bose knows how to sell hi-fi equipment. Open up a general interest national magazine and there's a prominent ad for Bose. How many high end manufacturers have ever run television ads? Bose has. Bose once sent me an unsolicited videotape ad thru the mail. Finally, Bose even has retail outlets. What a concept, actually spending money to make people awear of your product with the hope that they will buy it.

My question is why doesn't Martin-Logan, Krell or Harman (Revel, Levinson, etc) embark upon similar marketing efforts? The future of high fidelity sound reproduction will be for those companies that grab it. Right now, Bose is grabbing for that future. Will any high end companies step up to the plate and challenge?
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Showing 1 response by ultrakaz

I do not believe your premise that Bose is grabbing (for the future) the "high fidelity sound reproduction market." There are two (or more) different market niches. As Ed pointed out "high-end" means small market (an entirely different market niche). Because, very few people actually sit down and listen to music, very few would even care about "Krell" sound. For those that do there is the high-end. Because this market is small the high-end will never employ similar Bose marketing strategies-it would simply cost too much.

Even assuming your premise is correct, I don't believe that the future of "high fidelity sound reproduction" belongs to companies like Bose because of their marketing efforts. In fact, I believe that Bose is good for the high-end. The high-end feeds off of Bose; It gives non-audiophiles a starting point and a basis for comparison. Both Bose and the "high end" can coexist as long as there are people like us who really care about high fidelity sound reproduction.