That's according to a new study by J.D. Power and Associates.
The consumer watchdog group says that it sent 2,000 trained "mystery shoppers" into electronics stores over the last six months and found that retailers are strongly pushing LCD over its flat-screen rival. (The study was confined to sets 40 inches or larger.)
The results seemed to surprise the J.D. Power team which declared in today's press release that Plasma has certain advantages over LCD.
"While we see that salespeople are aggressively pushing shoppers to LCD sets, it is important for consumers to understand that Plasma technology also offers a number of unique advantages, not the least of which is that inch for inch, Plasma sets cost less than LCD sets,' said Larry Wu, a senior director at J.D. Power. "In addition, compared with most LCD sets, plasma TVs also display deeper blacks and show fast-moving objects better."
So why are retailers recommending LCD?
J.D. Power concludes that many salespeople are not very knowledgeable about the flat-screen category. For instance, the company says 38 percent of salespeople told their customers that LCD sets last longer while another 37 percent said images on Plasma sets could 'burn-in' permanently.
"Although burn-in was once a problem with the first Plasmas to hit the market, this has not been a serious issue for several years"' said Wu. "In addition, the durability of Plasma sets is now on par with that of LCD TVs, with many of today's Plasma sets rated to operate for 50,000 hours or more without failure."
J.D. Power also reports that many retailers fail to mention some of LCD's advantages, such as its lighter weight and better energy consumption levels.
While retailers are pushing LCD over Plasma, the company said the gap has narrowed some. In the second quarter of 2008, 23 percent of salespeople recommended Plasma, compared to 17 percent in the first quarter.
Among LCD brands, J.D. Power says retailers recommend Samsung (35 percent) and Sony (28 percent) most often while Panasonic was their first choice (37 percent) among Plasmas, with Samsung (14 percent) second and Pioneer third (12 percent.)
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