Page 94 - 100 Great Marketing Ideas (100 Great Ideas)

43 AVOID ANNOYING THE
CUSTOMERS

People are becoming increasingly marketing-savvy: most people
are fairly well aware of what marketers are up to, and can even use
some marketing jargon themselves if necessary. People do not like
to be manipulated—but they do like to buy things, and they do like
a bargain.

Computer printers are a good illustration. Printers are almost given
away—the prices are extremely low, and often someone buying a new
computer will be given a printer for free. Printer manufacturers can
do this because they charge a lot for the ink cartridges—sometimes
as much as the printer cost in the first place. This has become a
standard tactic, and one that customers see through, to the extent
that many people now buy cloned cartridges online, for a fraction of
the cost of the real thing. Of course, manufacturers try to sabotage
this by changing the printers so that cloned cartridges won’t work,
which leads the cloners to update their designs.

Going to war with the paying customers like this cannot be a good
thing. People look at the printer cartridge and cannot see value for
money—so they look elsewhere. Breaking this cycle is something
any sensible manufacturer would want to try!

The idea

Kodak is a company that has suffered a roller-coaster ride over the
years since George Eastman first made photography simple enough
for the average person to take vacation snaps. By the late twentieth
century, though, electronics was taking over as digital cameras
replaced film cameras. Nowadays, almost all new cameras are

100 GREAT MARKETING IDEAS • 85