This year's model?

摘要

In terms of mass market sales, hi-fi components probably reached their peak during the period in and around the 1970s. It was then that the video recorder began to appear, which soon became the 'must have' consumer product. Enthusiasts in the UK tended to go on buying their hi-fi from the established UK names. More generally, the public bought Japanese imports. The Japanese companies mostly manufactured units in far larger numbers than their Western counterparts in order to achieve economies of scale. They also established the approach of upgrading product ranges on a regular basis, which enabled them to market this year's tuner or amplifier as being superior to the one released the year before. By contrast, UK manufacturers tended to carry on producing what seemed to be the same model for some years in succession. Under the lid, however, these companies often made changes in order to update or improve the performance of a component. This gave them the advantage of being able to use the same tooling, dies, etc, for the product's case, fascia, and so on, while adjusting performance on the basis of experience and customer feedback.