Canon VS. instaX: A Camera Market Research Story

Participating in this semester’s AD & PR LAB, called “Market & New Media Research Lab” at the department of Communication, Media & Culture at Panteion University, we had the opportunity to not only collaborate, but also learn from an expert in the field of research, Mr. Konstantinos Ioannidis, Global Manager User Research at BIC. The main objective of this Lab, was to conduct a research about the Greek market of a certain product. Our team, Social Butterflies, due to our great interest in photography, decided to focus on the market of cameras. Our main objective was to understand which the trends are when it comes to the cameras’ market in Greece, and what interests Greek users the most. Our research was divided in three steps: a secondary research, a qualitative study (by conducting an online focus group), and lastly, a quantitive research with an online questionnaire.

For the secondary research, we looked up international sites in order to understand what the trends in the global market of cameras are. Undoubtedly, the competitors in the field of cameras are various, some of the most well-known names being Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Polaroid, Fuji, Kodak, Panasonic, Sony and the new-born GoPro. What impressed us the most from this research, was the fact that the size of the global digital cameras’ market is estimated to be worth USD (U.S. Dollars) 2 billion by the end of 2021, decelerating at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of over 20% between 2017–2021. The main reason of this deceleration, is the shrinking of the cameras industry due to the growth and development of smartphones. Nowadays, more and more smartphone companies invest on the excellence of their cameras, touching almost the quality of an actual digital camera. In order for the camera industries to still be profitable, partnerships with smartphone companies are created in order to improve the quality of the latest cameras. An example of a such partnership, is the one made between Huawei & Leica — at the same time, both companies are trying to take advantage of the increased usage and popularity of social media, and promote themselves as the most appropriate tool to capture the best shot.

For our next step, we wanted to connect with Greek users in order to find out their opinions about cameras and how they would categorize the existing companies. For this reason, and as the Covid-19 would hazard any attempt of any face-to-face communication, we conducted an online focus group of 5 persons (3 men — 2 women aged from 25–40) via Skype. From our findings, we came to the conclusion that the users of the cameras categorize the brands in 4 wide groups. We named the first one “The Kings”. These are the top brands in the market currently, which are well-known for their price and their high quality. Examples of this category are Nikon & Canon, who are mostly competitive towards one another. We continue with the “Millenials”, which are brands that are defined by the current trends in the market and their popularity on social media. They are more likely to be purchased by younger ages that are digital natives and tend to be more active. The main competitors in this category are Go Pro & InstaX. Next in row, it’s the category called “It’s a Family thing”. These are brands which are mostly purchased by families and are affordable, easy to use and have no attempt to be the first in market whatsoever. Brands like these are Panasonic, Samsung, Sony & Olympus. Our last category is called “Oldschool”. This category includes Kodak, Polaroid, FujiFilm & Rollei and the touching point of all these, is the fact that they are older brands that are harder to find in the market right now and their price is justified by their prestige and status.

For our third and last step of our research, we shared an online questionnaire to 100 participants, 66 of whom were women and the rest were men. We tried to share it to people from different age groups, in order to have more detailed findings — that’s why we have participants from 18 to 55+ years old. In our first question, we asked participants to share the main reason they used cameras. What we noticed was that between the ages of 18–34, the most common answer was “to share moments with friends” but from the ages of 35+, this reason did not appeal to any of our participants. Reasons such as “traveling with family” or “for work purposes” had the first place. We also observed that the first criteria men tend to look for before buying a camera, is the kind of the camera, whereas, women focus more on the technical characteristics. Surprisingly, no matter the age group, trends on social media were significantly the last thing users check before they purchase one. From our research, we also noted that Canon is one of the most well-known and reliable camera brands, whereas other brands such as InstaX, Rollei & Fuji are the least reliable. When it came to InstaX, almost none of the participants in the age groups 35+ knew about the brand.

We focused on Canon & InstaX as two complete opposite brands to see how people felt towards them. 80% of our respondents believe the major characteristic of Canon is its great popularity, whereas for InstaX, 1/3 of the respondents skipped the very same question, leading us to the conclusion that they may not know the brand that well. Lastly, we asked them which of these 2 brands they would purchase. The vast majority answered “Canon” and from the small percentage that went for InstaX, we noted that all respondents belonged in the age group of 18–24.

This finding led us to think of some recommendations for InstaX’s brand. As all the respondents were between the ages of 18–24, we looked for the 2 most important characteristics according to them, and found out that users in these age groups, pay most of their attention in the kind and the technical characteristics of their cameras. After all, we are talking about a high-tech generation that has a great knowledge about technology and its features, and also desires the best possible quality in their photographs. Despite these facts that InstaX could possibly focus on, we also took into consideration the fact that the 1/3 of the respondents did not describe the brand, potentially because they were not that well-aware of it. InstaX has built every single of its campaigns in the American & Korean culture — something which differentiates a lot from the Greek mindset. As a consequence, we believe that if InstaX desires to gain a bigger part in the Greek market, it surely needs to integrate more into the culture by promoting through paid advertisements with people that influence the youth and have a great knowledge in gadgets.

Betty Tsakarestou, Dimitra Iordanoglou, Konstantinos Ioannidis

Konstantina Angelidou, Grasiela Varkari, Myrto Galanopoulou, Katerina Somi, Margarita Kammenou