Quote:
Originally Posted by Fbone
You can't compare prices between 2 very different countries without considering cost-of-living, wages, taxes, currency fluctuations and business expenses. For example, you don't include US sales tax or exchange rates in your price comparisons. That $9.99 book would cost me $10.69 or AU$11.38 today but AU$12.08 a few months ago. Of course, your prices include VAT.
Also, minimum wage is considerably higher in Australia. Currently $16.87 (with full health ins) or US$15.85/hour. In the US it is $7.25 or AU$7.72. So a US worker earning minimum wage would have to work 1.5 hours to buy that $9.99 book but an Australian worker only 0.9 hours for a $14.99 title. So from a value proposition the Australian shopper may feel its worth the $14.99 more so than the American one. In a sense, books are actually less expensive in Australia looking at this one metric.
Everyone wants to save money and the internet makes it easy to compare prices. And during 2012/2013 when the Australian dollar exceeded parity with the US, products appeared very cheap I'm sure.
While you may want retailers to reduce prices, I'm positive you don't want your wages reduced to match.
And India's minimum wage is 28 cents.
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Thank you for your post. IMHO your comments are partially relevant to physical products but no electronic ones. Even with physical products the only factors strictly relevant are the extra costs of importing and otherwise getting the product to the local market. The other factors you quote are relevant to one question, the maximum price the local market will bear. And this is okay. I am not against the idea of a good profit. And with physical books this worked for a long time. It will no longer work because for electronic goods there is effectively one world market. Attempted geographic restrictions are simply attempts to turn back the clock to the good old days.