It is (painfully) obvious that Pentax is happy with their position in the market, and in fact may not even care if they lose more of it. That's sad.
General Motors founded the marketing scheme of starting off first time buyers with something that fit their budget, namely the Chevrolet. From there, they had stepping stones: Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick, until you reached the pinnacle, Cadillac. It was a marketing strategy that worked well for them, (until Roger Smith screwed it up - but please don't get me started down that path!) and works well with other types of goods.
Pentax already acknowledged that offering new buyers an inexpensive SLR brought new users in, but they claimed the users then jumped ship. With a little ingenuity they could have kept a lot of them from moving to other brands. For instance, how about sending the new user a $50 or $100 off coupon for a new lens 6 months or a year after they bought their camera? Follow that up with a discount coupon when a new model camera is introduced, to encourage them to trade up. Buyers today, especially younger folks are no longer brand loyal unless they have a good reason to be, and Pentax needs to be more proactive in that regard. They need to work on keeping customers, not just getting them. Both of my DSLR's were registered with Pentax, but I've never received a thing from them - period. No "thank you for buying", no list of available lenses, no buyer incentive coupons. Few people (especially myself) buy a DSLR without buying additional lenses or other accessories, but apparently Pentax doesn't care.
It's sad.
