Suppliers and especially manufacturers have market power because they have information about a product or a service that the customer does not and cannot have, and does not need if he can trust the brand. This explains the profitability of brands. Peter Drucker

What causes a customer to no longer trust a brand? Where does he turn for a trusted advisor?

In our own lives for a variety of reasons most of us have turned to a new car repair shop because we no longer trust the local dealer’s work. This happend to me about 8 years ago, I had a grinding sound in my cars front end. It was pretty obvious that I was having a spindle bearing problem. I first brought my car to the local Ford dealer, they told me there was nothing wrong and charged me for the time they spent. I was perplexed because I knew through research that there was a recall on the spindle bearings and Ford would pay to replace them. However, my local dealer would not listen to me. The next week I went to another Ford dealer, I explained the problem to the service supervisor and I told him that the other dealer would not fix the problem. He smiled and said not to worry, the problem was a known service problem and they would fix it at no charge.

The new dealer won a customer, the old dealer lost my business.

Zerowait tries to understand our customers needs and create affordable NetApp support solutions for them. It appears that Peter Drucker was correct, while in California last week, I learned that many of our customers trust the Zerowait brand and our concentration on providing an affordable alternative to NetApp’s high prices.