[citation][nom]scuba dave[/nom]It's called supply and demand Tpi2007. There is no getting around that. As long as there are enough consumers out there willing to buy the item at the increased cost at a speed that is fast enough for the company, to make it worth it.. Then that's what they are gonna do. And the reverse is also true. As long as the consumer(s) think the product is worth the price, they will continue to buy it at the higher price. Once the company calculates that they will make more money by selling at the lower price, they will.That's a little extreme.. It doesn't work like that. Well, more accurately, it only works that way with lower supply, but only up to a point. Companies ultimately undercut each other to bring more business their way. Selling more units, for less each can be worth it in the big picture, if it gets stock off your shelves fast enough. Which inevitably keeps prices low/normal for the most part.Like it was stated before, multiple times. Love it or hate it, its how "Supply and Demand" works. Lower supply, higher cost. Higher supply, lower cost. It's not always pretty, but I haven't seen a better system yet.[/citation]
I beg to differ. You see, the problem with letting the market work absolutely freely, respecting the suply/demand theory, leads consumers to being robbed by greedy companies. It's part of human nature too, by the way, and while there is no way to getting around that, that are ways to minimize it.
Take this example: about two years ago the EU ordered all cell phone carriers around Europe to gradually lower their roaming prices and now also their data prices in roaming. This had to be done because the carriers had all "informally" set their prices so high that the consumer had no other choice: you quit one carrier, the other was equally expensive. A reltive of mine usually goes abroad to the same country and he's seen a dramatic price cut in his phone bill.
The same thing with happens with other major companies, but in some cases the EU still hasn't done anything. Take Microsoft Word, for example. It is the De facto word processor. Everybody I know uses it. Do you know how many bought it ? Nobody! It either came with their computer preinstalled or they got it from someone else on a cd. And then companies blame piracy. They should lower their prices, that's what it is. In this case the EU didn't do anything, and now there is a viable free alternative: OpenOffice and others. But how long did it take for us to come this far ?
During many years the customers were literally robbed because they worked with Word at their job and then they had to continue some work at home and they didn't have and had to buy at the price Microsoft dictated.
And guess what ? The Chinese have a special price for Microsoft Office now. With 95% piracy Microsft decided to stop blaming piracy and lowered their price to a ridiculous $ 29 (http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Microsoft-Office-China-Piracy,news-4289.html) and over a year period they saw an 800 percent increase in sales.
The free market on its own doesn't work properly, because the consumers don't always have all the necessary information. And even if they try, sometimes they won't get it or they don't have the time required, so they end up gettin ripped off. This is when the individual states, or in this case, the EU, has to step in and protect consumers. There are many ways to do it, and one measure alone might not be enough. Forcing companies to lower their prices sometimes has to be done.
The other hipotesis to minimize the problem is having a business in a country that thinks that copying the look of european and american cars is a compliment to those who built and designed the original... and this eventually lead Microsoft to not blame piracy, because they wouldn't get far with such a massive cultural understanding of things, and they opted to go practical: lower prices. See if they're not making money out of it ? They're thinking of continuing with the low price!
To sum it up, the suply/demand theory left to it's own leads to exaggerations. Sometimes external intervention in necesary. Both are human nature.