Issue #0213/1 - Last week I was travelling back to Hemel Hempstead from London following an industry event when I had a sudden urge to go into the convenience store at London’s Euston mainline railway station and buy a Mars bar! A ‘Big One’!
Thankfully, I don’t travel out of London every day or this could become an expensive urge. I was somewhat shocked to be asked for 59 pence (around 92/93 US/Euro cents). Now I don’t know what a Mars bar costs in the US or in much of mainland Europe because the urge doesn’t come on me when I’m away from home in the same way as when I am at home – but I do understand that they can be rather more expensive elsewhere than in the UK.
On the train home, enjoying the delicious rich chocolate and caramel taste (oh dear, I’d better not write this sort of stuff too often), I began to wonder why on earth I had paid so much for something I could have done without. I quickly came to the conclusion that being able to do without it was irrelevant and that I had bought it simply because I fancied it - and that made it worth it, all 59 pence-worth of it.
However, the following day I was in a local store in Hemel Hempstead and noticed that the price of the same Big One Mars bar was just 39 pence (around 61 US/Euro cents)!! That is a huge 34 percent cheaper than at the London railway station or, looking at it the other way around, I paid a massive 51 percent premium for having a craving on a railway station instead of at my local shops! Incidentally, I did not buy one on that occasion.
So, the point? The real point is that it gave me an idea for writing a light-hearted piece for TCPglobal. But, believe it or not, there is some relevance. Needless to say, if we’re going to draw any comparison with printer consumables, we have to ignore the ‘could I do without it?’ because once we have a printer we do actually need the inks. There is certainly no element of ‘fancying’ or ‘craving’ involved (that was in the initial purchase!!). In fact, only two days ago, a print head failed in one of the printers here just at the time I needed to print a colour poster. This poster was required before the end of this week. I asked myself the question ‘Do I really want to spend that money right now?’ and had to conclude that whether I did or did not, I had no choice but to spend that money immediately or risk frustrating the person who was expecting the poster. It is the ‘when’ and ‘how’ of the situation that is important.
The whole point of this is that when we need an ink cartridge, ink tank, print head, toner cartridge, etc., we really do need it. If we do not buy the necessary consumables, we come to a grinding halt. We cannot produce our work, our memories, our correspondence, etc. We are actually disabling ourselves - and no one welcomes or likes being disabled. In response, we are often in a position where we are forced to pay a premium to satisfy the need. Ink cartridges can typically be up to 20 or 22 percent more expensive in certain high street locations and 24×7 out of town retailers than on the internet. No doubt the premium paid for convenience can be even higher in certain key locations (like mainline railway stations).
It is the fact that we have a ‘need’ that causes this price differential. When we ‘need’, we ‘need’ – and usually in quite a hurry. We may need to get that letter in the post, or to get that photograph, with personalised birthday card, in the post for mother’s forgotten birthday the following day. Planning does not come into the equation. If I had been able to plan to have a craving for a Mars bar at the London Euston railway station at about 9pm on Tuesday 10th September 2002, I would have had one in my pocket, bought in my local shop at 39 pence. If we could all plan exactly how and when we make or receive phone calls, the mobile phone industry would never have grown to the size it is today.
With ink jet consumables, the most likely time that we will ‘need’ to buy a new cartridge is during an evening or at the weekend when one of the children has come home with a piece of homework that has to be completed that evening and the ink cartridge runs out mid flow. If we have no spare cartridge to hand, our only recourse is to go to whatever outlet is open at that time of day. There is no time to shop around for the best price; no time to mail order via the internet; it is the wrong time of day for access to the best priced discount retail outlet. Inevitably the prices charged in the sort of place we end up going to are higher than we would hope to pay (although how a supermarket can charge some of the lowest prices for washing powder and milk and yet charge some of the highest prices for ink cartridges is something of an anomaly).
We can introduce an element of planning into our consumables spending and probably do most of the time - it is those unexpected situations that catch us out. Although we are unable to determine exactly when a replacement will be needed, or predict that we will be doing an intense print job at a particular time, we should usually be able to expect that we are likely to need a replacement within an approximate time frame. Then we can be prepared with the replacement waiting in the drawer. It is rather like buying fuel for our car – leave it too long and we can become disabled by running out (and probably pay dearly for allowing the tank to run dry on the motorway or in the remote countryside!) but on the whole we know when the long journeys are scheduled. Motorway service stations use exactly the same principle when pricing fuel 10 to 15 percent higher than off-motorway filling stations.
To pick up a little on something that was mentioned last week, the need to buy replacement consumables is a factor that the industry actually relies on to ensure that it can be profitable. We talked of the printer that is available at less than UKP 30 including tax (USD 47, EUR 48) and that the ink cartridges cost in the order of UKP 34 (USD 53, EUR 54). The industry needs us to buy the consumables or the industry is unsustainable. If we simply take the view that a printer is a disposable commodity and buy a new one when the ink runs out, the industry has to respond with real disposable printers – but they will cost more than UKP 30!
The industry has planned its pricing model – hardware vs consumables. The retailers are free to charge the amount they consider that their customers will pay. Convenience is usually something we pay for (the alternative is that it is used as a selling tool to encourage greater sales). We, the user, are free to shop around for the best price or the greatest convenience according to our wishes and situation and to plan so that we can purchase at the best price and benefit from the convenience of having the item to hand.
You, the reader, are entirely free to buy or not buy Mars bars, wherever you wish, whenever you wish, as you wish!
~End~
