Crye Precision Versus Condor Outdoor: Understand Value and How That Affects Our Decisions

As players continually develop into the airsoft culture, one way or another, they are exposed to two types of players, “speedsofters” and “milsimmers”. These titles aren’t meant to offend anyone but rather they give us a realistic perspective of each group’s ideologies. The hardcore “speedsofter” just wants to play. They don’t care about looks and are dedicated to practicality and sending BB’s down range. The hardcore “milsimmer” not only prefers a different kind of gameplay but a different kind of approach to purchasing gear. Dedicated impressionists will shell out hundreds of dollars to a single plate carrier to reenact military personal for an airsoft game. So why is there such a large difference between the hardcore speedsofting consumer and the hardcore impressionist consumer? Why does one consumer so highly value condor and another so highly value Crye. Well let’s explore this from a consumer behavior point of view.

The first thing we need to go over is how customers process product attributes (feature) to value. By figuring out how people establish values, we will be able to understand how customers make purchases based off of these values. Before that though, I am going to slow way down. There is a lot of business and consumer behavioral terminology that applies to this. I will attempt to simplify everything and break it down piece by piece.

The process of identifying product attribute and creating value out of these attributes is known as the means end chain. The means end chain consists of four parts: product attribute, consumer benefit, executive framework, and personal value. You can see it denoted below.

Product attribute can be defined as the product features and specifications. It’s what the product is at its rawest form. For instance, if we look at Crye G3 combat pants, they offer internal knee pad placement, different pocket placement, breathability, and beaver material as their choice for stretch material.

Now that we established product attributes, we can lead into consumer benefits. The consumer will evaluate product attributes and see if they can gain some kind of benefits from it. For instance, the internal knee pads (an attribute) can be seen by a consumer as a way to add comfort. The “comfort” is a consumer benefit. Since we have comfort, companies can establish executive frameworks. Executive frameworks are basically marketing strategies. I really don’t want to get into that. All you need to know is that executive frameworks gives us our leverage point (a selling point) that we can use to create value. Crye Precision probably recognizes that their internal knee pad slots give consumers more comfort. They basically have found their leverage point. They can how create marketing strategies to brand themselves as “more comfortable” which gives the consumer a numeral value for this comfort. Basically, the price of the item is what we perceive as value. We assume that price is value.

So how does this help us? Price is the key. If we assess both groups, the hardcore speedsofter and the impressionists, we find that their price sensitively is absolutely different from one another. This translates out to that they value different things. As obvious as this is, most debates forget this simple fact. Impressionists believe that quality is the most important attribute to making a purchase decision. They believe in value accrued from the future value gained from that one time purchase. The value of impressions itself cannot be ignored as well. Impressions are the mainstay of military simulation. Without impressions, there would be little physical differentiation between speedsofting and milsim events. The value or enjoyment that people gain from impressions cannot be underestimated. This is why impressionists are relatively price insensitive. They are willing to pay for that additional value gained.

The hardcore speedsofter is a completely different story. They just want to sling BB’s downrange and stay within a reasonable budget. This budget is their consumer benefit and Condor’s leverage point. Condor attempts to address the budget minded airsofter. In fact, a lot of companies try to keep costs down so they don’t have to compete directly with real steel companies or else they will have to provide the same value that the real steel companies provide. They address the need for budget equipment to price sensitive customers.

When one sides argue Condor or Crye, it makes me roll my eyes. There is so much more than just “this is better”. It comes down to what the consumer values the most. Even though this read addresses the extremes of one side or another, we can assume that most players are a little of both. There is a time and place for everything and this rule doesn’t exclude Crye Precision or Condor.