roweraay, you're only assuming that the SURE program encouraged National Camera Exchange from carrying the line. You have no proof, nor have you indicated that you've talked with anyone at the store that has mentioned the SURE program as the incentive for them to carry the line.
Thanks for the info. I wasn't suggesting anything specifically just what Mark had suggested. And quite frankly as I said in the OP I wasn't all that interested in the prices controls themselves just.
I'm aware of that case, though I have not read it in detail. The big difference, at least to me, is that Sony also is a retailer in that it sells direct to the public through the Sony Style Stores and its website. It also offers discount coupons or other incentives, such as when you register a product, that are good only through on-line purchases (or maybe also at a Sony Style store). Thus, what Sony is doing is far more than just a manufacturer setting a retail price.
Seems like you have moved away from Sony, lately.Here's an article regarding the decision-
LEEGIN CREATIVE LEATHER PRODUCTS, INC. v. PSKS, INC., dba KAY’S KLOSET U KAY’S SHOES
You can't use the coupons to buy cameras and lenses, only accessories. And it doesn't seem to me like the SURE program applies to accessories.
All of the Sony stuff I bought was before SURE. I haven't bought a thing from them since they started it.
Yes, no, maybe.
I agree that prior to the ruling, companies had ways to enforce the price that a product was sold for. The first thing manufacturers do is to check a company out to see if it's the type that would discount. Secondly, they would limit the number of dealers carrying the line, so their is less incentive for a dealer to have to discount. Then, they limit the quantity of product out there, so that demand exceeds supply. Then if a dealer does discount, they find that the factory is suddenly 'out of stock'.
What makes you think Nikon and Canon are not doing the same thing? There is not much variation in the prices of their cameras from what I've seen.
But you can use it for some items, including flashes I believe. The point is, however, that Sony through this policy is putting its own stores at a competitive advantage over other retailers selling its products and for whom Sony "fixes" the prices. I am not an antitrust attorney (and I took my antitrust class in law school a long time ago), but this does differentiate what Sony is doing from the Supreme Court case, at least to some degree. Whether or not that would be enough to allow a court to reach a different decision I can't say, and such uncertainty plus the high cost of pursuing such a claim allow Sony to do what it is doing without challenge.
To my knowledge it was indeed a cost cutting measure that let to his release, but I don't know for certain as such personnel decisions are not going to be talked about publicly. What was more problematic is that, in my experience, he was one of the most knowledgeable Sony reps. Indeed, his primary job was training store personnel on the Sony products more than serving as a sales rep. He would also be the person demonstrating the product at store events, or at shows like PhotoPlus. I have talked with many Sony reps at PhotoPlus and elsewhere, and this guy knew more than just about all of them. Note also that he, like most of the other reps, actually worked for a third party marketing company (BDS Marketing), and not Sony. Sony "farms out" such marketing and training responsibility to a third party (or parties), which might also be part of its problem in the U.S.
Sony may or may not have cut its R&D budget, but it products over the past 1 1/2 years or so were just not competitive. Since Sony came out with new products it could and should have made them better and/or more competitive. There was no reason it had to so totally redesign the camera body for the A230/330/380 cameras and dumb them down as much as they did, two reasons those cameras are not competitive and have presumably not done well in the market. The resources devoted to redesigning the bodies could have been spent far more wisely in improving the A200/300/350 or simply adding a few new features to build on what Sony had already done with those cameras that had done fairly well in the market. Instead, Sony subtracted and made worse, and then overpriced the "upgrades" for the A300/350 (the A500/550) while also taking out some basic functions. Bottom line - Sony made some dumb product decisions that has led to its stagnation in the market. Add to that having no upgrade/successor for the A700 after more than two years and Sony's Alpha line seems to be going backwards (except for the A900/850, which are very much niche products and not intended for the larger DSLR market).
Now that's a bit of an understatement.
Took a quick look at the decision, but did not read it in full. The court did not say that the establishment of a minimum required price was not a violation of the antitrust laws. What it did do is overrule a prior precedent (almost 100 years old) that said that such a policy was a "per se" violation of the antitrust laws. That meant, if you proved such a policy it was automatically a violation of the law and not subject to further analysis. Instead, the 5 conservative justices decided to change the "per se" standard to what is called a "rule of reason," which means that a further analysis is required to determine whether the conduct at issue is a violation of the antitrust laws. The Courth thus sent the case back to the lower court for further proceedings consistent with the change in how the antitrust laws are applied. The lower court, and the appeals court, had applied the prior "per se" law in ruling that the challenged conduct violated the antitrust laws.
I can understand you have a lot of catching up to do, but claiming facts is another thing. I didn't change, Sony did.Just stating facts as I saw them.
