Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase
What a non-sequitor. Folks that will steal, will steal. I do not worry about it. I'm speaking about folks who wish to see the backlist put out by the publishers for legitimate purchasing. I was hoping to highlight the inconsistency of wishing companies to spend their time and money creating a product for them, while at the same time arguing that such a product has little value and therefore should be priced like a used paper back book.
Another non-sequitor. I replied to your naieve assertion that the customer is always right. Well, that's not true. No business believes it is no matter what their marketing might say.
Great example. Ford has to compete with Hyundai's new cars -- Ford does not try to put out new cars to compete with used Ford's from the 70's.
They spend hundreds of millions of dollars convincing folks to pay their high prices. Imagine how cheap Coke would be if the company listened to folks on this forum who think that cost has something to do with price. Let's see...coke is water plus sugar and a few other ingredients that add up to a penny or so, throw in another couple pennies for the can and distribution. And what? Coke should sell for 10 cents a can instead of a dollar? (from a soda machine). Even the 25 cents a can you can get on sale is 2 to three times the cost.
Coke doesn't give a flying fig that lots of folks think their prices are shockingly high. Does not care that there are numerous no-name brands that sell for far cheaper. Every person who drinks a cola is not Coke's customer target. Coke would rather spend millions upon millions of dollars building a brand than saving all of us that money and make their product cheap.
Lee
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Then why doesn't Coke charge 10 times what they do for their product, or 100 times? They'd make a lot more money, right? Who cares about the marginal customer, they aren't particularly profitable, anyway...
Any business that takes that attitude and incorporates it into their culture, dies. it takes a while, but it dies.
In 1968, GM was the biggest company in the world, and one of the most profitable. A friend of mine went through their university in the mid 1970's. (yes, they had their own school of management.) by the mid '70's they had started teaching exactly the same ideas you are espousing. They went broke in 40 years. The biggest and best company in the world on a tobbogan to perdition all the way...
It nearly killed IBM in the late 1980's.
This isn't original to me, C. Northcote Parkinson described it in great detail in his book Parkinson's Law (1957). I just watch it happen...