Originally posted by biz-engineer Buying cheaper camera more often does provides the buyer with improvement in electronics, autofocus and software , but it is not cheap. That true, from buyer's behavior, that entry level cameras are cheaper to begin. However, a cheap way to buy cameras is to buy a high resolution one and keep in until the shutter dies, of course the hard part of it is to keep shooting with the old model. I met one guy who takes amazing photographs with a D700... no idea how much shutter count; must be pretty high still working just fine.
Agree with you, but that doesn't mean consumers don't act like that. Actually most of the consumers just buy a DSLR when the old one stop working of many every 10 years and just with the kit lenses.
Sure some buy a cheap body quite often changing it to the latest greatest gimmick, we have quite a few there that hope that the new body will mean the kit lens will suddenly perform as well as the pro f/2.8 zoom thank to the new electronics, but this usually doesn't work. We have people like that that brought K30 then K50 then KS2, then K70 and that brought old 55-300, then HD55-300 and now 55-300. Some don't even sell the old gear.
They spent more overall than if they got higher end gear once, but this isn't their way. They don't like what is big/heavy. They don't like to have to spend lot of money in a single run, they don't like they don't get the pleasure to get often a new toy... They are more interested in the electronics specs...
Anyway, in all case, if you want to sell to them, you have to a product that target them. The K50 was not even different than the K30 but people were thinking it must be better. K70 and KS2 are the same product except the K70 a bit better at high iso, but some people brought both...