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Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands
09-22-2018, 08:03 AM
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Excellent points. Yes, the internet does help dominant players at the same time that it helps the long tail of niche players.
Even though Canon and Pentax both make cameras, they don't compete with each other as much as it might seem. Canon buyers pay extra to get the same neck strap as sports-photog pro, saturation marketing, and ready off-the-shelf inventory at local retailers. Pentax buyers pay less but get a camera with high-performance in the photographic niche(s) that Pentax focuses on.
Pentax would lose money if it tried to emulate Canon. But Canon would also lose money if it tried to emulate the value-for-features of Pentax. At a deeper level, Canon and Pentax are not really fighting each other at all. In almost every product category, these kinds of dominant brand versus niche brand distinctions exist. And the internet helps both types of brands.
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Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands
09-22-2018, 05:51 AM
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It's not a realistic view because it assumes that all that matters is marketshare dominance.
Admittedly, marketshare dominance used to matter because before about the year 2000, the only way to sell consumer products was to have huge marketing budgets and huge funding for brick-and-mortar retail inventory and promotions in thousands of retail outlets. And the only way to justify all those costs was to sell huge volumes of units. Twenty or thirty years ago, consumers had no way of finding, learning about, and buying niche products.
But now the internet makes it easy for consumers to find obscure products, find supportive communities around obscure products (Pentax Forums!!!!!) and buy those products. Thus, Pentax design, build, and deliver awesome products at decent prices because it knows the old marketshare dominance model is a dinosaur. All that marketing and retail inventory makes Canikony products much more expensive without making them any better. Product makers no longer need to pay the wasteful high costs of marketshare dominance.
Let Canikony customers waste their money keeping Canikony fighting to stay atop pointless waves. Meanwhile, Pentax plugs along delivering great products at great prices.
Dominance is irrelevant and assuming that a company has failed if it doesn't have dominance is both negative and wrong.
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