Originally Posted by
eightblack
Not sure if I quite agree. Your dogmatic statement that no one ever buys a $15K bbq is like saying no one buys a Bugatti Veyron, or no one would buy the Porsche 918 (all 918 made were sold) at an average cost of $1M.
People buy EK F every day of the week. True, some are savvier than others about where they ticket from, but the product exists because there is a real, quantifiable demand for it.
I did 50+ revenue F sectors in a year once (SIN-MEL-SIN). I'm not rich, but the cost of the EK F product was cheaper than SQ/QF J product at the time and all my travel was being funded by a client.
Okay, I admit that the BBQ example does not match exactly to airline tickets, as obviously a significant number of people buy EK F tickets. I think it's still possible that no one (or only a very very few) people buy the $15k BBQ, as the situations are different in a few ways:
1) The same $15k BBQ can sit at the front of the store for a year, acting as a magnet for people to buy the $4k or $1k BBQ. That is, the BBQ store only has to have one $15k BBQ. OTOH EK has F seats in lots of aircraft with tickets being sold daily.
2) People can't buy a bunch of $4k or $1k BBQ over the years, accumulate BBQ points, and then upgrade to the $15k BBQ.
3) BBQs aren't (in general) funded by a client or employer.
I disagree here because if there was no one ever buying it, it wouldn't exist. There are people buying that $15k bbq, that $1million dollar car and those $20k first class seats. Or else they wouldn't be selling them.
The point is that
even if no one ever buys the $15k BBQ, the marketing value alone makes it worthwhile. The manufacturer could produce a limited number on the assumption of one per store, and the manufacturing cost (which is of course far less than $15k) could be justified in the profit of people buying the $1k or $4k BBQs instead of the $200 ones.
EK seats - yeah, I know people buy those. My mistake for extending the analogy too far.