Individuals are becoming increasingly marketing-savvy: most individuals are fairly well aware of what marketers are as much as, and can even use some marketing jargon themselves if necessary. People don't like to be manipulated - but they do like to buy things, and they do like a bargain.
Computer printers are a good illustration. Printers are almost given away - the prices are extremely low, and often someone buying a new computer will be given a printer for free. Printer manufacturers can do this because they charge a lot for the ink cartridges - sometimes as much as the printer price in the first location.
This has become a standard tactic, and one that clients see via, to the extent that many people now buy cloned cartridges online, for a fraction of the price of the real thing. Of course, manufacturers attempt to sabotage this by changing the printers so that cloned cartridges won't work, which leads the cloners to update their designs.
Going to war using the paying customers like this cannot be a good thing. Individuals look at the printer cartridge and cannot see value for money - so they look elsewhere. Breaking this cycle is something any sensible manufacturer would want to attempt!
Kodak is really a company that has suffered a roller-coaster ride over the years since George Eastman first produced photography easy enough for the average individual to take vacation snaps. By the late twentieth century, though, electronics was taking over as digital cameras replaced film cameras. Nowadays, nearly all new cameras are digital - couple of film cameras are still available, as well as the films can be difficult to find.
Kodak therefore went into the printer business, producing photoquality printers for home photography. In 2007, the business launched its EasyShare 5300 all-in-one printer. It'll print ordinary documents on ordinary paper and photographs on photographic paper, and it'll function as a photocopier and as a scanner. It can even connect wirelessly to the computer so that the printer need not be in the exact same room as the computer.
Exactly where Kodak really pulled off a revolution was in the pricing structure, however. The printer is fairly costly compared with other printers, but the ink cartridges are extremely long-lasting and relatively inexpensive, so the running expenses of the EasyShare are much less than those of other printers.
To get the message across, Kodak put its own salespeople in computer shops to explain the advantages of buying a more costly printer: ultimately the company expects that word of mouth will take over as the main promotional plank.
Keep in mind that clients are not stupid: they understand an excellent many of the ploys marketers use, and see them as just that - ploys. If you are planning anything that lies outside normal practice in your industry, you need to be ready to put time, effort, and money into informing clients. Word of mouth could be encouraged by doing something radical, but the best way of encouraging it is to have a good, efficient product and an honest relationship with your clients.
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