Originally posted by Vaards
One owner of two D3s,
Fotogrāfs Andrejs Zavadskis with huge friends list on facebook (thousands), with popular wedding blogs and so on, writing all the time about his Nikon... How do you think, how many these D40 he unintentionally sells? ;-)
And I know similar ex-pentaxist of Canon fellas, who shots canon fulframe and lot of people are influenced by his suggestions. They have forgotten about Pentax, as a result, newcomer even Don`t know that Pentax exist. So, they buy Canikons.
The argument here is that full-frame is important for marketing. I think the anecdotes you give are accurate, but there may also be
other, more cost-effective ways for Pentax to market itself. Just because one approach works for other brands doesn't mean that it's the best for Pentax.
I recognize that this is a legitimate business argument for offering full-frame. But I don't think it's a very strong argument on its own.
For example, the same effect works in the other direction. Canon makes some of the most popular point & shoot cameras, and, when people look for a more advanced camera, they're likely to look at Canon for that reason. Pentax has always struggled with their P&S cameras. Maybe the Ricoh acquisition will help there, although certainly there is no current large Ricoh P&S market in the US. I'm not saying this approach
is better, but it might be.
Or, Pentax could push the 645D as the market flagship/showpiece — which they don't really seem to do. (See the comments in
http://www.dpreview.com/news/2011/11/16/pentax645Dsamples, where the Digital Photography Review people explain that they asked for a review copy and Pentax said no.)
Alternately, there are plenty of marketing ideas that
don't revolve around other market segments. In fact, it's arguable that one could make a good marketing campaign from "The big companies just want to try and upsell you to full frame, which makes more profit for them — Pentax is focusing on
your needs as a serious, skilled enthusiast with a
real world budget." (Which is, in fact, what Pentax seems to have largely done, which is why
I am a happy Pentax user.)