"tony cooper" wrote:
in message ...
On Sun, 09 Sep 2012 11:31:48 +1200, Eric Stevens
wrote:

I don't mind them asking me to pay what they think its worth to me.
The problem is that they seem to think it's worth twice as much to
most of the world as it is to residents of the US. I object to having
to pay (sometimes much) more that US$1000 when I know that if I lived
in the US I could buy it from Amazon for between US$500 and US$600. I
know they are ripping me off and I resent that.

I'll preface this by emphasizing that I know absolutely nothing about
how prices are set for Adobe products in other countries.

I do wonder, though, if this is an Adobe policy or an Amazon policy.
Neither outfit would want to discourage sales to someone just because
the person does not live in the US. It doesn't make sense
business-wise, and both organizations are very savvy business
operations.


Adobe and Microsoft and Apple all run local operations in each country as
independent companies responsible for local sales and service. And their
head offices only service the US market. And Amazon won't ship software,
cars, or breakfast cereals to Japan (or other countries). So if you want to
by a Ford car (oops, software package) you have to buy it from a dealer in
the country you are living in. Some of that is due to the problem that
countries get to tax local corporations (and all corporations are local and
independent of the parent for tax purposes), so each local company has to
buy product from the US company (accounted as business expenses) and collect
revenue from sales (accounted as taxable income (after expense deductions,
of courses)).

It can be really irritating to live in a country that's not the head office.
Here, the generic English language versions of things (e.g. Microsoft Visual
Studio) is way more expensive than the localized (e.g. Japanese) version,
which obviously has more work in it than the generic version, which I'd love
to buy from Amazon and pay shipping therefor.


I would seem to me that this is more of a government thing than a
business thing...that there are some taxes or other fees imposed by
the government. You may be getting ripped off, but I think you might
be blaming the wrong party.


In the sense that you can't have a corporation without a government to make
that possible, I suppose that's true. But if you want separate countries and
companies, you need to put up with taxation to pay for those services.


It does not add a nickel to the cost of the product to allow it to be
downloaded in New Zealand or New Jersey. A mailed disk would add to
the cost, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Adobe's losing a sale. Amazon's losing a sale. Why would either want
to do that?


Adobe doesn't think they're losing a sale: they think that to sell in NZ
they have to not only play by NZ rules, but price things such that profit is
maximized. If two sales at a higher price make more money to the local
company than three at a lower prices, you picked the wrong country to live
in.

-- David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan