> > Sorry for the second Mike Johnston reference of the morning, but after > finding the first one I went browsing through his blog and found this, > which, IMHO, is an even better one. On the subject of primes: > http://theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com/2006/09/smart-and-du > mb-prime-lenses-103_16.html > > Really insightful stuff here, especially how products that, in > themselves, lose money for their manufacturers, end up helping the > company *make* money by bringing in customers for other products. In > particular I noted how he says people will buy into a camera system > because of the availability of products in that system that they're > never going to buy ;-) >
He writes: "This gives rise to a strange business model: the deliberate bringing to market of a product that will, in and of itself itself, lose money-a fate understood and predictable even in advance. (I'm sure our economist readers will tell me what that's called.) " Let's ignore "predictable even in advance" :o) I'm no economist, but it's the simple principle of a loss leader. The classic example of this is baked beans in a supermarket. The supermarkets lose money on each tin of beans they sell. But if they stopped selling them their supermarkets would be empty, and they would lose even more money because they wouldn't sell anything at all. Regards, Bob -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
