"Daniel Prince" wrote in message
...
Jeff Liebermann wrote:

The problems start when there are competing products. I call it the
Walmart effect. Walmart, Kmart, and many online vendors specialize in
selling solely on the basis of price. If there are two competing
products, differing only a few pennies in selling price, *ALL* their
orders will go to the lower priced product, with nothing to the higher
priced equivalent. Walmart aggravates the effect by setting the price
at some artificial low level, and challenging their vendors to meet
their price goal.

It seems to me that there is a good opportunity here for other
retailers. If a retailer sold only electronic goods that were well
made and well designed, they could sell them for ten to thirty
percent more than the junk sold at Walmart and Kmart.

I think many consumers would be willing to pay a little extra for
devices that would probably last four to ten times as long. This
would be especially true if they had two (or more) cheap-junk brand
devices fail.

The retailer could require vendors to only use non-junk capacitors
with voltage ratings at least three times the voltage the capacitors
would be exposed to. They could also require that no part of the
device ever get more than 30 degrees warmer than the temperature of
the room it is used in.

The devices could have much longer warranties and the store could
advertise itself as "The quality store". I do not think this would
require excessive advertising, especially after the first few years.
--
I don't understand why they make gourmet cat foods. I have
known many cats in my life and none of them were gourmets.
They were all gourmands!

I do service work for several retailers of 'quality' consumer electronics,
and all are having a hard time of it. Their only customers now are those who
can genuinely afford the stuff. The others who aspired to being owners, and
saved their hard-earned for however long in order to enable them to become
owners, are long gone, with whatever spare money they have, going to keeping
a roof over their heads, and putting food on the table. Times is 'ard, my
friend ...

As I repair the stuff for a living, you would think that I would know
better, but even I buy what I know to ultimately be junk. Just a few weeks
ago, I bought a DVD player to replace the 'good' Tosh that I had owned for
some time. It came from the local food supermarket, and was some kind of
unknown junk name. But you know what ? It plays any disc region that you put
in it, any home burn disc type and format both CD and DVD, came with a
complete set of connecting cables, and even a full function credit card
remote handset. And what did it cost ? Fifteen quid, that's what. And it has
a year's full warranty. Even if it failed within the warranty period, it's
just a throw away item. Go buy another. Half a dozen pints of beer ...

Arfa