gdanmitchell
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 p.32 #8 · EOS-R5....will it live up to the hype? | |
EverLearning wrote:
gdanmitchell, i agree size of market influences price, but if your means of increasing 'market' is increasing price by adding all kinds of extras, the subsequent reduction in price due to enhanced market reach doesn't offset that increase. If it did, everything - cars, TVs, furnaces, cameras, computers, etc - would just come fully spec'ed out. Such is not the case.
The incremental costs of adding video capability to these still cameras is almost certainly very small by comparison to the base price of producing the units.
The savings from removing the video capability would likely be trivial. The costs of maintaining two separate lines would be much larger. And don't forget that some percentage of the market actually WANTS the video capability in the still camera, and some additional percentage (including me) discovers often buying their still camera that it is sometimes useful to have video capability as well from time to time.
Video is just another feature that some users find attractive, but not all care about — think of features like face-detection, ultra-fast burst modes, some of the esoteric AF modes, the ability to work with electronic flash, etc.
There are some marketing concepts behind how products are specified that may not be at work in this case. People do not select products for wholly rational reasons. One reason that, for example, many car models come with three levels is that this represents a rough division of the market into three groups: those looking for the very lowest price, those who want a basic model with typical so-called extras (and who have an aversion to the "cheapest thing"), and those who want it all.
Someone I knew worked at a major software firm many years ago. This company had produced a first-of-its type productivity product that ended up being hugely successful.
This person — who was on the software development side, it was basically "his" product — told me about meetings that included the heads of the marketing team, the engineering team, and others. The question came up, "How should we price this thing?"
The answer from the marketing team was not, as you many be surprised to hear, to price it based on the actual production costs — e.g, if production cost X than the price should be X + profit margin. The answer was, to paraphrase: "Well... you could sell it for $450 (pre-1990), in a nice box, accompanied by thick manuals with high production values. Or... you could sell it for $49.95 in a small cardboard box with an inexpensive manual. You'll likely make about the same profit in the end."
The bottom line here is that I'm baffled that folks are so up in arms about the fact that their great still camera also has some additional features that don't interfere with their still photography, might potentially have some use, and which enlarge the market of the cameras, allowing the development and production costs to be spread over a larger number of units.
Dan
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