In the case of both the fax machine and the yellow pages (I can’t vouch for car cigarette lighters), their continued use is largely because of people stubbornly refusing to advance to newer technologies and instead insist on continuing to use the old and familiar, despite its outmodedness. Thus manufacturers feel obligated to keep making them (especially as they’re still turning a profit for it).
An example for fax machines: I used to work customer service for a card printing business, and at the time, they were trying to coax all of their customers to adopt the use of their new website which allowed them to do all of their orders online, and thus not have to continue dabbling with the clunkier fax machines of old. But easily half of their clients refused, and continued to insist on using the fax machine, and thus we had to keep utilizing faxes so to accommodate them or risk losing their business.
In the defense of these clients though, they did have some valid reasons. One was that doing their orders via fax allowed for them to request special customizations better, something the site was not set up well to do. Another was the fact that we weren’t the only printing business they worked with, and they used fax for these other businesses as well, so it didn’t make sense for them to go to the effort of setting up their orders in a totally different way for us when it was easier and more efficient for them to just keep using fax machines across the board. And finally…there was a few, shall we say, teething issues with the site initially when it first went live (though I imagine the business has long since fixed most of those issues by now).
In the case of both the fax machine and the yellow pages (I can’t vouch for car cigarette lighters), their continued use is largely because of people stubbornly refusing to advance to newer technologies and instead insist on continuing to use the old and familiar, despite its outmodedness. Thus manufacturers feel obligated to keep making them (especially as they’re still turning a profit for it).
An example for fax machines: I used to work customer service for a card printing business, and at the time, they were trying to coax all of their customers to adopt the use of their new website which allowed them to do all of their orders online, and thus not have to continue dabbling with the clunkier fax machines of old. But easily half of their clients refused, and continued to insist on using the fax machine, and thus we had to keep utilizing faxes so to accommodate them or risk losing their business.
In the defense of these clients though, they did have some valid reasons. One was that doing their orders via fax allowed for them to request special customizations better, something the site was not set up well to do. Another was the fact that we weren’t the only printing business they worked with, and they used fax for these other businesses as well, so it didn’t make sense for them to go to the effort of setting up their orders in a totally different way for us when it was easier and more efficient for them to just keep using fax machines across the board. And finally…there was a few, shall we say, teething issues with the site initially when it first went live (though I imagine the business has long since fixed most of those issues by now).