Monday, February 1, 2016

Buying and spending: who determines what's hot and what's not?

I definitely thought this article was interesting because it shows how powerful the Internet is in seeing our buying and spending habits. It doesn’t take long after searching for a new product on Google that an ad pops up on my Facebook sideline attempting to sell the same, or a similar, product. For instance, before Christmas I was looking at purchasing a Nike windbreaker jacket for myself. Low and behold not a week later, I saw the same jacket on my timeline. While part of me thinks it’s cool that the Internet can find good deals for products I like without me having to ask, it’s also scary to think that something is tracking our every spending habit without our consent.

Something I found to be cool was that retailers will carry only content that can generate sufficient demand to earn its keep. I thought this was interesting because how would a retailer determine what has market potential and what doesn’t? We know that no retailer is 100% when they make these assumptions (or else most shelves would be empty with a high-demanded product and theatres would be sold out) so who decided what movie will be screened or what product a store will have, etc.? And what happens to the products that are left out? Well…oddly enough they’re getting the most money (i.e. The Long Tail.)

The article also talked about how ITunes sells each song for $0.99, which they thought was “too low,” meaning they must be happy that most music is now $1.29. 

My thoughts are, since many people download music illegally anyways, why raise the prices? I’m interested to see how much revenue Apple brings in now since raising the music prices, and I’m also curious to know if music piracy sites have had increased downloads as well. In my opinion, the argument that buying cheaper or pirated music has a cost of time is ridiculous. It doesn’t take long to download music that way, and saving a few dollars is well worth it.

No comments:

Post a Comment