Analysis of Consumer Response and Pricing of Smart and Connected Products

The emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) has created an unanticipated rise of smart and connected products in the consumer market. While, smart and connected products have become a fundamental part of our day to day life, consumer’s perspective regarding these smart and connected products still remains an uncharted territory. This paper tries to explore how these “smart” and “connected” products are perceived in the consumer market and what are the key driving factors behind the unparalleled success of these products. In order to answer these questions, the authors first determined the “smartness” and “connectivity” criteria to judge all the products based on the most commonly used rating systems for such products. Followed by a case study analysis to determine if there is a correlation between “smartness”, “connectivity” and other product parameters. It is discovered that “smartness” as defined in the paper, is a resource intensive component of a product and therefore, directly affects the price of a product. On the other hand, consumers are more receptive to “connectivity” aspect of a product. The correlations found in the paper could help fill the gaps between areas of focus for technology development in the industry and user demands.