Friday, July 13, 2007

Jays's unethical use of www.shure.se




I was looking for support when my Shure E3c broke and found out that Jays have kidnapped www.shure.se. This is the cyber equivalent of putting up a store using another company's name to lure customers into entering.

Why would you want to do that? Of course they do it because they think it will increase their sales and build their brand. But will it? Think about a couple of scenarios:
  • The potential customer understands that Jays and Shure are two different companies. They were looking for Shure but now find themselves kidnapped by this rogue Jays company. Potential customer not happy and will never become actual customer. (This is where I am right now.)
  • The potential customer thinks that Jays and Shure are the same company. Buys a pair of headphones.
    • If the headphones are good, they recommend their friends to go get a couple of Shure headphones (because that is what they think they bought).
    • If they are bad, they tell their friends to stay away from Shure.
No alternative here increases the value of Jays's brand. The last alternative, bad Jays products, will discredit Shure but what does Jays have to gain from it?

There is one last alternative: the potential customer understands that Jays is trying to use another company's brand but doesn't care and buys their product anyway. Which will increase sales, but it can't possibly be good for the Jays brand.

I'll contact Jays to see if and how they want to comment on this.

Update: After nine days, still no reply from Jays. Submitted story to digg to see if someone besides me cares.

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