Jorge Quinteros

If you’re one of the many average consumers that has toyed with the notion of owning a Kindle, you’re more than likely in the majority group, where you find yourself trying to make sense of how this new technology will make your life better and in return make you forget about the price-tag. Jason Perlow from ZDnet.com presents a compelling article on the Kindlenomics of potentially owning the device:

So it would seem that unless the convenience factor of the Kindle currently outweighs its costs, the Kindle is not a huge value proposition for your average consumer today. But if its cost were to drop approximately in half – say, between the 3 and 4 book per month level — at around $200 per unit – then we might start seeing greater e-book adoption by a larger segment of the population.

He goes into great detail in how the device is more economically favorable in higher education at the moment and what’s more interesting is that in order for the average reader to “wipe out the cost of the Kindle completely, you would have to buy and read six books per month over the course of one year. Love the device but just not now.

March 4, 2009 |   Tags: kindle economics links

A team of economist have established a term to describe people who ‘spend lavishly on visible goods to prove that they are prosperous’. The term is Conspicuous Consumption. The team conducting the study hypothesized that visible consumption lets individuals show strangers they aren’t poor and by that nature, the lower the racial group’s income is, the more valuable it is to want to demonstrate the personal buying power. Rich people do quite the opposite:

Aside from a penchant for fancy cars, these millionaires devote their luxury dollars mostly to goods and services outsiders can’t see: concierge health care, home renovations, all sorts of personal coaches, and expensive family vacations. They focus less on impressing strangers and more on family- and self-improvement. Even when they invest in traditional luxuries like second homes, jets, or yachts, they prefer fractional ownership.

This might explain why we frequently see photos of celebrities dressed like bumps on gossip magazines. They’re true value is in the bank.

November 30, 2008 |   Tags: economics