Kodak to stop making digital cameras

On Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:11:17 +0100, Mxsmanic
wrote:

Eric Stevens writes:

So you are really saying not distributing all the profits is the first
step in promoting corporate growth.

It's one potential step.

Is it possible to make profits without providing a useful product or
service at a reasonable price

Yes, especially for natural monopolies.

But Kodak has never been a natural monopoly.

That's not correct. There are a number of companies with a 'no
dividend' policy. Most companies only pay limited dividends.

How is their stock price performing? They need to have either rapidly
increasing stock prices or dividends in order to attract investors, although
companies don't really need investors once they've bought the stock.

If they have stock they already have investors.

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:17:25 +0100, Mxsmanic
wrote:

Eric Stevens writes:

So all those who really needed the special lubricants would be able to
get them if they were prepared to pay more.

No, that's just it: the company decided to stop making them, period.

Only because insufficient customers were willing to pay more.

Regards,

Eric Stevens

Trevor wrote:

"tony cooper" wrote in message
news
Providing useful products and services at reasonable prices.

You have to do that to stay in business.

That's somewhat debatable. All a company has to do is convince some
of the public that the product is useful or desirable and offered at a
reasonable price.

"Reasonable price" has nothing to do with it! The biggest profits are made
by selling products at *unreasonable* prices to suckers. Some companies can
do that for decades. Others only a short time.

That model is quite unstable. One of the stable high profit models
is a large up front cost to get into a market then sell a product very close
to the price od admission for a competitor, with the constant threat
to drop the price if a competitor enters the market.

That model can run for decades even hundreds of years. Railways for
example. Steel mills are another example.

w..

In article , tony cooper
wrote:

You wouldn't be able, for example, to buy a bar of soap for 10 cents
if wasn't for advertising. Without the market for the brand of soap
created by advertising, and volume sales, a bar of soap would cost
several dollars.

Some products don't need advertising. My father used to say "If your
product is good, you don't need to advertise." I think he realized that
was a bit naïve, but it went to the notion that really good products
sold themselves by reputation, word-of-mouth, etc.

That's fine for local products. A restaurant, for example, can be
very successful without spending a dime for advertising. Likewise a
dry cleaners or some types of local service providers. Products that
are nationally distributed, though, are not going to do well without
advertising.

not necessarily. many local restaurants need advertising to get started
and many national products need nothing. word gets around quickly these
days.

Trevor wrote:

History shows many of them are. But capitalist consumerism is about creating
a market and supplying that market at the biggest possible profit you can
manage. Some companies manage very big profits indeed, and still have their
customers coming back for more. In that case both would appear to be happy,
and what I think is irrelevant to either of them.


Do you have examples where customers are not regulatory required to
patronize a provider?

There are two models that are often applied. Some companies decide that a
specific price is what the market will bear and they optimize how little they need
to provide to sell into a market. The alternative is to maximize value the customer
will get for a competitive price. The long term profit is surprisingly similar the
later company lasts longer.

w..

In article , Mxsmanic
wrote:

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people
some of the time but not all of the people all of the time.

Either of the first two will keep you in business.

not for long.

Sales didn't bring in enough revenue to support the costs.

Management most likely concentrated on cutting costs rather than increasing
revenue, which is always the (fatal) path of bad managers trying to increase
profits.

wrong.

On 2012-02-14, Mxsmanic wrote:
Eric Stevens writes:

So you are really saying not distributing all the profits is the first
step in promoting corporate growth.

It's one potential step.

Is it possible to make profits without providing a useful product or
service at a reasonable price

Yes, especially for natural monopolies.

That's not correct. There are a number of companies with a 'no
dividend' policy. Most companies only pay limited dividends.

How is their stock price performing? They need to have either rapidly
increasing stock prices or dividends in order to attract investors, although
companies don't really need investors once they've bought the stock.

In the Go-Go '60s, Ling-Temco-Vought famously never paid a dividend.
LTV is long gone, now. Traditionally, the consistent dividend payers
were the widows' and orphans' stocks, like public utilities. When you
buy a stock the company whose shares you've bought usually doesn't see a
dime of the money. The exception being company issued new shares when
they sell equity, basically a share in the business, to raise money.
Investors don't like to see their share prices fall, and since the owners
of the company also control the company, they will do what they need to
do to protect their investment. You either sell out or you improve the
performance of the company. The second option is not the easiest.

Bud

In article , tony cooper
wrote:

Some products don't need advertising. My father used to say "If your
product is good, you don't need to advertise." I think he realized that
was a bit naïve, but it went to the notion that really good products
sold themselves by reputation, word-of-mouth, etc.

He was right. Did you buy your last washing machine or roll of paper towels
based on advertising?

Most people do.

no, most people buy whatever is on sale that week.

Go down aisle in the store where the paper towels are and you will see
nationally advertised brands and also a "store brand". The store
brand will be priced lower than the nationally advertised brands, but
the nationally advertised brands will out-sell the store brand. The
store brand will be a nationally advertised national brand private
labeled for the store, but the branded product will outsell the
private labeled product.

you don't know how well any of the brands sell.

In article , tony cooper
wrote:

And how do they know what is on sale? By reading the advertisements.

by walking down the aisle.

In article , tony cooper
wrote:

The advertisement tells you which store to go to so you can walk down
that store's aisle.

people don't need ads to know which store to go to, and if they're
truly out of the loop, they can ask a friend or neighbor where they got
theirs. word of mouth matters a lot.