Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

It's the trick luxury brands have been playing for years. Walk into a Tiffany's store and you see the same silver that was poured to make the jewelry at the department store, but the blue box costs you a 2000% premium.

I've always wanted to go into the luxury goods business for this exact reason. I just never thought there was such a thing as luxury software goods..



> I just never thought there was such a thing as luxury software goods..

There is. That's why educational pricing for software exists (non-luxury), and why Microsoft sells eight different versions of Vista http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista_editions and six versions of Windows 7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions (I provided the links so you can see a sampling of changes to make a luxury software item.)

That's why both movies and games sell in collectors editions.

The profit on the "plus/premium" editions is far far far more than the extra expense of making them.

This whole science is called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination

And if you are going to sell anything you MUST learn it. (Although maybe not from wikipedia :)


Yes, yes, yes, right in every regard. Don't forget one of the biggest examples: Apple. You see price discrimination across all of their product lines (MacBook Pro -> MacBook -> Plastic MacBook), (27" iMac, 24" iMac, 21" iMac).

I'd definitely pick up a good book/econ textbook to learn about price discrimination if you're in a business selling to consumers.


The craftsmanship really is superior at Tiffany's though, and they also have a lot of 'not-found-elsewhere' items because of their uniqueness.

I view Tiffany akin to the way I view art, which is to say yes, if you melted it down, it would lose significant value, but you weren't buying it for the raw materials were you?


Check out the now banned "I am rich" app.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: