>> What does this say about that "High-end cameras do not sell well" crap? > > It just says that they really screwed up their pricing to me. If they > really had a handle on the market they would have priced it below the > competition but not sub US$1000 (which seems to be the current cascade > pricing point). Then they could have ended up with a far better > profit/item ratio and not been completely overwhelmed with orders.
>From a business standpoint, that's a foolish thing to do. Regardless of whatever small amount of profit they would make off a higher K10D price, they still need to sell lenses and other accessories to make the real profits. If they set the price low, sell out initially and then fill remaining orders later, they're getting more bodies out there that will need lenses. If they raise the price and sell fewer bodies, they end up selling fewer accessories. It's as simple as that. All this aside, I am completely befuddled as to why you or anyone would want Pentax to give the K10D a higher price. Price point is immensely important in marketing electronics, and Pentax HAD to be competetive with their pricing in order to sell to the masses. You have to remember: in the booming dSLR market, the masses are everything. Groups like the PDML matter little in the long run compared to people walking into Wal*Mart and picking a camera off the shelf. As far as profit margins on camera bodies go, I can tell you that the price I paid for my *istD, which I ordered as an "employee personal purchase" directly from Pentax, was almost insignificantly lower than the price the camera sold for in stores or on the internet. Trust me, from my experience in camera retail, the profit margins on camera bodies has not changed since the D came out, only the retail prices have come down. On the other end of the spectrum, if I told you how much I saved on my D-FA 100mm macro last summer compared to what normal consumers paid, you would be green with envy. What I'm trying to say is, cameras bodies make miniscule-to-no profits for camera makers because they have to be able to lock-in customers to buying their other products. This is a fact, and all camera manufacturers work this way. They must sell lenses and accessories to make their living, and thus selling fewer bodies would be a bad business decision. Selling fewer bodies for a higher price would be worse than disappointing a few people by pushing back the ship date, or not being able to meet initial demand. At the very least, people who get their cameras first will create a buzz about the camera, hopefully causing more people to buy from the next shipments. The same thing happens in other industries all the time. In the video game industry, for example, game consoles often LOSE money for the company that makes them (the original XBox is a good example of this). They exist to lock you into buying games and accessories, which make much higher profits and drive consumers to buy even more as new games come out. When the initial shipments of XBoxes or Playstations sell out, there is a huge buzz amongst consumers who think that, since the system sold out, it must be good, therefore I want one. A huge percentage of consumers are influenced this way (sadly, I don't have the statistics to back this up since I was laid off) in all sorts of industries, including the photographic industry. God, I have GOT to stop rambling so much. John Celio -- http://www.neovenator.com AIM: Neopifex "Hey, I'm an artist. I can do whatever I want and pretend I'm making a statement." -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
