Quote:
Originally Posted by radleyp
You must be careful about making statements about the law on fair trade and pricing in the US. In the US, a manufacturer can set a "manufacturer's suggested list price": note that second word. The days when you could set a fixed retail price and refuse to sell to retailers who undercut it are long gone (and this is directly related to the growth of discount stores). The arguments for refusing to sell to a particular retailer are based on quality, type of store, level of merchandising, quality of display and customer base, not price. We have had cases where suppliers have refused to sell to discounters on account of price alone, and they are losers for the supplier.
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Somehow, Apple is managing to enforce price discipline for their iPhone/Pod/Touch products. It doesn't seem possible to get them cheaper from one retailer than from another. It looks like Apple is adept at using all of the values above to insure retailers don't discount their products to prices below what others are charging. (And they're popular enough that the retailers may see no need to discount to get the sale, and use "loss-leader" prices on other products to get the customer in the door, where they might walk out with an Apple device at full retail while they're at it.)
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Dennis