The Compelling Story of Headphones

Nick Manriquez

Almost every day, headphones and ear buds are used throughout the human race for a variety of reasons. Whatever the reason may be to use these sound compelling inventions, from listening to audio books or just music itself, they have truly come in handy in many industries and with enjoyment for the consumers who would like to purchase a pair. However, with such a wide variety of these music blasting machines, comes with a monopolistic market that allows people to compete with making very similar of the same item, but in using different styles.

It goes into a little more than just styles though with the competition throughout the marketing floor. More people would prefer to purchase a pair that has a higher reputation within this field such as “Beats” by Dre or Skull Candy. So one might ask, how much of a difference does being a well known brand really make?

www.stanford.edu/class/ee15n/Headphones.doc‎

As you can see, Apple is the brand of headphones that are being purchased most by the consumers. This may be because the headphones Apple sells all come along with the purchase of an Iphone or Ipod. Word of mouth gets around town and the next thing you know, Apple begins to dominate the headphone market. This also may be because Apple headphones sell for the low price of $29.99 for a single pair when the rest of these brands can only be purchased for a much higher price than Apple. Also, Apple might have more of a uplift with their quality than other headphone brands. Overall, when you have the low prices people want, quality, as well as some good marketing tactics, Apple is leading in sales in this very competitive market.

http://brandsandfilms.com/2011/03/sleek-by-50/

When looking at this graph, you can see that not only do different brands of headphones compete in pricing, but also with the number of products they choose to put on the market. Brands such as Monster, Pioneer, and Sony are set at lower prices than some of their competitors, but have a limited number of products available. Whereas with some competing headphone companies such as Ultrasone, Sennheiser, and Beyerdynamic, we can see that the number of products put on the market increases. This may be because people who can only afford to buy the cheaper headphones are only going to buy one pair to use until the product absolutely can’t function anymore. On the other hand, the people who buy the more expensive headphones can afford these luxuries and are going to be searching for new products to spend their money on. Since this is such a competitive market across the world, companies have to know how to market their brand to the key consumers they are trying to obtain.

After gathering all of this information it all comes down to one final solution, buy a pair that you find most affordable to you and that will give you the most bang for your buck. Don’t fall into buying the most popular brand that just looks cool but a pair that will be most efficient for you and what you would use them for.

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