Don't forget the MiniDisc format that Sony also released years later under the "Walkman" brand - for a while there it was an audio storage format and playback hardware that briefly seemed ahead of its time. Sony, if nothing else, were technical innovators during their best days. You knew the gear wasn't imagined and designed by a bunch of bean counters.
> You knew the gear wasn't imagined and designed by a bunch of bean counters.
Hmmm.... Only later when they were marketing TV's?
Hated Sony for selling essentially the same TV with the same guts but leaving out one chip (for example) so that "Picture in Picture" required you spend an extra $500 on the high end model.
I always suspected it went something like this:
• Engineers describe the feature set they can deliver for a new TV.
• Bean counters determine it can be manufactured for $500.
• Marketing decide there will be three models: the F, the FX, and the FX+. Determine pricing will be: $800, $1200, $1800.
• Marketing aligns the FX+ model with the engineers feature set — cross off features to arrive at the FX — cross off even more to arrive at the F.
• Profit.
I shouldn't beat up on Sony though — all consumer electronics have been doing something like this since ... when ... the 1950's or so?
For a mass market good it’s not tactful to openly ask each customer how much they’re willing to pay and sell at that maximum price, so another way to get closer to achieving that is to differentiate products with features that have very low marginal costs.
Psychologically, it’s also part of “anchoring” where you establish the lowest value of the product with the lowest price version, so the middle and high prices don’t seem so bad.
And of course, who wants to buy the cheapest version of something? People generally feel better buying a better product, so the cheapest one might only exist to do that. Also a good strategy for wine in restaurants, sell the wine with the lowest supply cost at the middle price, because people will opt for the middle priced item over the lowest price.
