So if you get cameras imported from another country without including a warranty nor the costs involved marketing the brand (advertising, reps,spare parts...) it can be sold for less.
Which country sells Canon DSLR cameras at prices lower than the US prices? Where do these gray market importers go to get these cameras?.
The country you're looking for doesn't exist.
The vast majority of the time, the importer who brings a gray market product to the U.S. does not buy it at retail. They buy the products at semi-wholesale prices from sources who have access to the products at Canon factory wholesale prices -- in almost all cases because those sources are, in fact, Canon authorized distributors for their respective region.
So, for example, let's say you are the authorized Canon distributor for -- pulling a non-plausible name out of my hat -- Tahiti. You buy from Canon Japan and resell to Tahiti camera stores who then resell to consumers. You are responsible for covering advertising & marketing, warranty costs, customer support, sales costs and all other expenses related to supporting the Canon brand in Tahiti. Canon Japan pays for none of that. You must charge a significant profit margin to cover those very real and substantial costs in Tahiti. So if you buy a EOS 98D camera from the Canon factory for $1,000, you probably need to sell it for $1,400 to a Tahiti camera store who will then likely resell it to consumers for about $1,600. (I'm using U.S. margins here -- in many parts of the world, typical wholesale and retail margins are actually higher than in the U.S.)
If you want to, however, you can buy extra product from Canon Japan and sell a portion of it to a clever business person from Brooklyn. (You're not supposed to do this, but unless Canon Japan is really determined to stop you -- and there's a lot of reasons why they probably won't be -- it's fairly easy to get away with. And you'll probably use a front company, or several of them, to do the actual transaction.) You will not be responsible for any of the costs associated with that product -- no advertising, no warranty, no customer support, nothing. So you can sell it to the guy from Brooklyn for a much smaller margin -- let's say $1,100. You pocket $100 dollars for doing nothing more than being a re-shipping agent. (Again, I'm simplifying here -- there are layers and nuances -- but this is the gist of it.)
The importer in Brooklyn also has no costs related to supporting the Canon brand in the U.S. That's all being paid for by Canon USA -- customer support, advertising & marketing, web sites, etc. etc. The only thing the Brooklyn importer is responsible for is repairing the camera if it breaks. So if he adds $50 to cover his possible warranty liability, then adds a 15% retail margin, he can sell the camera to consumers for $1,300 or so -- cheaper than the retail price in Tahiti where it came from and cheaper than the retail price in the U.S.
So this is why gray market is cheaper -- it bypasses the funding of regional brand support. Money is never collected to cover regional marketing & advertising and customer support -- the thousands of things that regional distributors do every day to support and promote their brand. This is why the authorized distributors in places where gray market product is commonly sold are so p*&ssed off about it. They are paying all the costs to promote the brand, and the guy from Brooklyn is taking advantage of their efforts but contributing nothing to pay for them.
There is one other factor in gray market pricing and that is currency exchange rates which can increase or decrease the profitability of gray market importation, but the majority of the price advantage typically comes from the fact that regional support costs are bypassed, not from currency exchange arbitrage.
