风光不再的中端汽车市场

作为美国最大的汽车生产商，通用汽车公司曾经代表了美国一代中产阶级的追求，但公司却在2009年迅速垮台;可同样接受经济危机洗礼的苹果公司和宜家公司，一个马不停蹄地用高端新品吸引全球目光，一个继续以价廉物美笼络顾客，两家公司的生意都蒸蒸日上。通用破产的背后折射出市场格局的动荡：一头是价格高昂的名牌产品，一头是价格低廉走平民路线的产品，原本作为中流砥柱的中端市场正被不断侵蚀。

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: 美国苹果公司最新推出的平板电脑，定位介于苹果智能手机和笔记本电脑之间;gamble: 赌博，冒险。

2. shell out: 付(款);iPod, iphone, Mac: 指iPod音乐播放器、iPone智能手机和苹果电脑。

3. Steve Jobs: 史蒂夫•乔布斯，苹果公司首席执行官，苹果电脑的创始人之一。

4. Ikea: 宜家，瑞典著名家具公司;H. & M.: 瑞典低端时尚品牌;Flip Video camera: 一款轻便价廉的高性能摄像器。此句中Ikea、H. & M.、Flip Video都以产品价廉物美而闻名。

5. paradoxically: 出人意料地，不合常理地;high- and low-end: 高端和低端的。

6. Hermès: 爱马仕，法国高端时尚品牌，主要产品包括箱包、服装、香水等。

7. downturn: 经济衰退;reemerge: 重新出现;segment: 部分;Ford Focus: 福特福克斯，福特公司出产的一款低价家用轿车;lure: 引诱，诱惑;showroom: 展品厅。

8. Acer: 台湾宏基公司，全球五大个人电脑公司之一;dominant: 占优势的;resonably: 适当的;reverse: 相反;premium-price: 额外高价。

9. gravitate: 被吸引到;Big Middle: 大规模中间市场，指服务质量、价格等均处于中间状态的零售市场空间。

10. mushy: 烂糊的，此处形容中间市场不景气。

11. General Motors: 缩写为G.. M.，美国通用汽车公司，2009年6月1日申请破产;squeeze: 挤压。

12. midrange: 中间的;execptional: 优越的，杰出的;justify: 证明……是合理的;value-conscious: 重视实用价值的。

13. economies of scale: 规模经济;mediocre: 中等的，普通的;shoot: 拍摄;high-def: =high-definition，高清晰;memory: 存储容量;trade down: 降低消费。

14. conversely: 相反地;skimp: 不够用心，马马虎虎。

15. top-of-the-line: 最高级的;feature: v. 以……为特色。

16. niche: 合适的位置。

17. shorthand: 速记，此处指简略记下各种产品的特点;Consumer Reports: 美国《消费者报告》杂志，由非盈利性消费者组织协会出版发行，其特点是针对各种品牌产品作出无偏见的调查和提出建议;CNET: 全球领先的科技资讯网站;Amazon’s user ratings: 亚马逊在线购物网站的用户打分;gauge: 估计，判断。

18. generic: 一般的。

19. Apple TV: 一款由苹果公司生产的数字多媒体机，可将计算机里的多媒体文件由高分辨率宽屏电视机播出;hit: 成功而风行一时的食物。

20. allure: 诱惑力;market share: 市场占有率;translate into: 把……转化成。

21. moderately: 适度地;suggest: 使想起;Highland: 苏格兰高地的;ballad: 民歌，民谣。

22. afore: prep. 在……之前。