Originally posted by jamarley Not sure what goes on elsewhere in the world, but in the US, what drives market choice is largely based on advertising presence. Both C & N have allocated huge budgets on TV and print media coverage. And it's probably true that retailers demand kickbacks for allotting shelf/floor space and that perhaps Pentax considers this verboten.
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Yep, you pay for premium shelf space at all big box retailers, and you subsidize all advertising in flyers etc to get presence.
Pentax probably doesn't consider it verbotten they just have a very limited budget based on a % of the sales volume, and they likely require a measurable return on all ad investment
Canon has a ton of cash to spend, and have halo products to promote which convince people to buy at the lower end (if they can make that beautiful ds mkIV some of it must end up in my rebel sort of thinking)
they also have other industries that benefit from the name awareness (ie photocopiers business)
Nikon as well has the money and the higher end halo products that benefit the range.
TV is damn expensive ad space, and to get justifiable returns you have to sell a hell of a lot of cameras. Pentax doesn't have the retail presence (or likely the manufacturing capacity) to get that many cameras in peoples hands
The 645D definitely gets a halo product out there, but distribution and capacity have to be addressed before throwing a ton of cash at ad campaigns that can't be supported with availability
it would take a concerted effort and 5 year plan to get there, and should probably be done market by market leaving the biggest market for last as it requires the biggest investment - it does seem to be the plan actually they are really targeting the japanese market and have gained share there. profit from that can be reinvested in pursuing another market and so on.