F. George McDuffee expostulated:

| As a followon to another post I just made, see WSJ article Wed
| June 22 on this.
|
| I ask the same question about Whirlpool that I asked about
| Maytag. How much did they claim on their tax returns for market
| research and product R&D over the last 5 to 10 years? It is
| clear they did not do any.

I think you're mistaken. Whilrpool has introduced some well-developed
new products (this according to engineering folks at one of their main
competitors) and I've purchased a number (more than a half dozen) of
top rate new Kitchen-Aid (a Whirlpool brand) appliances for my own
home. The folks at Maytag weren't exactly thrilled to hear me praise
Whirlpool/Kitchen-Aid, but did pay close attention when I listed the
features I liked best.

I have to believe thay spent some reasonable amount of R&D money to
produce just the products I happened to buy - and that new products
don't just appear gratis on some design engineer's CAD screen. FWIW, I
suspect that they spent really serious money developing their "Duet"
laundry appliances.

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html