[LINK] Kogan on Online Retail....

[Richard Chirgwin]

Fred - I don't know about it being good for products. But if you're one 
of ten retailers of a must-have product, do you:

a. Rock the boat by exposing resale price maintenance?
b. Rock the boat by importing lower-cost supplies from the US and damn 
the consequences? or
c. Shut up and draw attention away from the supplier's role in price 
setting?

RC

On 9/01/11 2:23 PM, Fred Pilcher wrote:
> Richard wrote:
>> It's quite clear that vendors - not just in the IT industry - impose
>> what amounts to "penalty pricing" on markets like Australia. I'm
>> assembling some price samples out of curiousity, and I can see vendors'
>> "recommended retail" prices in Australia that are more than 60% higher
>> than their US counterparts. It's easy to pretend that this is just
>> retailer greed, but how do you account for it when you're talking about
>> people who own their retail outlets (eg Apple)?
> It's one of the basic principles of capitalism: charge what the market
> will bear. Australia's pretty much a captive market for them - it's not
> easy for us to pop across the border into another country, and they
> often place restrictions on international sales.
>
> Australian retailers are probably happy to go along with this price
> gouging since it enhances their profits.
>
> Fred
> _______________________________________________
> Link mailing list
> Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
>