Originally posted by Aristophanes Cameras are small and portable by design. So direct marketing and consumer purchasing online is soon to be the norm.
There is no doubt about that....but, still there is nothing that makes up for actually holding something in your hands and examining it to see if it will work for you...
A case in point: Several years back, (OK it's been a couple of decades) I was very interested in pairing down my OM system of four bodies/winders and a dozen lenses into a Leica R system....I went to the local Leica dealer, put the R-4 into my hands...and hated it's feel...my XL hands were clumsy on the camera...it was so strange to me after my years with Pentaxes and Olympuses that I decided to stay with my OM gear as an OM body with a winder or motor drive fit just right, and weren't too clumsy without the drive...
Kind of like my K-5...if I didn't have the knock-off battery grip I'd have two fingers of my hand uncomfortably positioned under the camera body and not like it at all! With grip = nice!
Originally posted by Aristophanes This is not about protecting B&M retailers. This is about controlling Amazon.com inventory over-purchases and permanent sales philosophies.
Well, it is still about controlling prices in the distribution channel...no mention is being made of differences in the wholesale pricing....I bet there that quantity purchases will still get better discounts than individual purchases...if not then there is no incentive to purchase large quantities, which drivies up the number of units manufactured, which keeps more cash flow to the manufacturers, which helps keep more people employed...so, there really doesn't appear to me that there should be any downsides to making a bit of a discount for large quantity purchasers...
The other side of that is that there may be more profit for B&M's to have quality staff, or like the local CanNikSon store here, have enough profit in the units to actually make it worthwhile to spend the time with a customer and educate them about the Pentax line....
As always, YMMV and Money Talks/BS walks.....
But, let's just all hope that Ricoh does not try and do direct marketing of the Pentax SLR line...that has been the death knell of more than one audio manufacturer I know of....
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