Target (TGT) starts selling $229 Blu-ray disc player
Posted by: in Marketing and AdvertisingFiled under: Products and services, Marketing and advertising, Target Corp. (TGT)
Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) has started selling a Blu-ray disc player for what’s probably the lowest retail price you can find one at: $229. I’ve stated many times in the past that this new format won’t catch on with consumers until retail prices routinely get to less than $200, so this new price from Target is nearing that mark. Of course, panicked U.S. consumers probably won’t be buying any Blu-ray players the remainder of this year as they watch what wealth they did have evaporate in the markets.
The Target model is an Olevia brand player (yes, that’s an off-brand), which marks a $70 reduction from a current Sony Blu-ray player that is being sold alongside the Olevia player for $299. Still, unless there’s some breakthrough difference that Blu-ray manufacturers and retailers can market correctly, most U.S. consumers will stay with their progressive-scan DVD players that sell for $75 or less and have a perfectly fine picture (although not true high-definition).
So, perhaps sometime in late 2009 — roughly a year from now — the market will see $99 Blu-ray players and regular consumers may finally feel the urge to purchase one and begin re-purchasing their movie libraries in yet another format. That is, until super-duper, high-fidelity Purple-ray players hit the market sometime in 2014 and the cycle repeats yet again. Perhaps by then, we’ll all be out of this economic funk and won’t be protecting our cash hoards, however tiny they may be by then.
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