Better Buys for Business just surveyed 175 office equipment purchasers and found that 32 percent plan to make a purchase or lease within the next 12 months.
And what did those surveyed say they look most for in their printers?
Answer: Price (46%), cost of ownership (27%), service guarantee (21%), networking and interfacing capabilities (20%), first-hand experience with a brand or product line (19%). Brand reputation (12%), feature set (10%), speed (4.5%).
It drives me nuts that most buyers look at price almost twice as more then they do cost of ownership...this is not logical to me at all. Suppose you are going to go buy a car and you go to your local Ford dealer and he has two cars for sale. Both cars have the exact same features, bells and whistles...the only differences are in the price of the car and the rated MPG for the vehicle. vehicle one costs $5000 and gets 1 mile to the gallon of gas and vehicle two costs $20000 and gets 38 miles to the gallon of gas. For most people, the more economical decision would be to buy the $20,000 vehicle because over the course of owning the car they would be far ahead of the game due to the 38 mpg!!! Now if the car is going to be driven 100 miles a year, I guess the $5000 car makes more sense...
My advice to office equipment buyers is this make sure you pay attention to your total cost of ownership. I have seen it numerous times where a buyer goes to Staples and buys a $300 multi-function printer and within a month they spend over $300 on supplies for the machine. Yet they think they got a great deal because they did not buy the $3000 machine that would have cost $30 a month to operate...simple math shows that within a year the $3000 purchase is ahead of the game...
