On Wed, 2003-09-24 at 15:14, Nadav Har'El wrote: > > Without saying anything on the value of this specific service, I'm always > surprised about the prices that companies choose to charge for what is > essentially an online versions of a books (yes, I know, the site provides > more features than a book. But all-in-all, you go to that site looking for > the same information you would normally go to find in the book version). > > When something is available as a book, even if the book is slightly less > convenient, the online version has to be competitive with the price of the > book. Needless to say it also needs to be competitive with free services > that people are used to getting on the Internet. > > And yet, Mapa chose to charge 204 shekels per year for an online subscription. > Compare that to about 160 shekels for their Gold Atlas book, which I've been > using for 5 years after buying once. Similarly, Rav-Millim costs 112 shekels > a year for their online Hebrew dictionary - compare that to 90 shekels I > paid for the good Milon Hahove dictionary or about 350 shekels for the > 5-volume printed Rav-Millim - both of which will still be useful for a few > more decades. [snip...]
I think it is a matter of demand and offer and of different markets. Imagine there are two types of people - book-freaks and online-freaks. The book-freaks don't consider online services as much and therefore will not pay more for them, but the online-freaks dislike books and put a high value of having information available to them where ever they are and in a much convenient manner. Then these online-freaks will be willing to pay more for online services than for books and vice versa for book freaks. If that is the case, then Mapa are very reasonable in their pricing. They don't want to gain book-freaks as customers because this means lowering the prices and thus having less profit from the online-freaks. Also, it means that you're probably a book-freak and therefore will not pay for their services. Ittay -- ======================================= Ittay Dror ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) User Space, R&D Qlusters Inc. Tel: +972-3-6081956 Fax: +972-3-6081841 ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
