"Now, as for your comments on supply and demand. Yes, you are correct. The marketplace will set the price on products. And thru CAPITALISM, another bad word on this thread (apparently), and thru competition, those prices are set. But here's where we disagree. In your example of baseball, you mentioned that if the players agreed to lower their salaries by 50%, that the owners would NOT lower their prices. I respectfully disagree. If we as consumers KNOW the players have taken that cut, we will EXPECT lower costs to be passed on to us. Just like when oil prices drop, we expect to pay less at the pump. If not, we shop elsewhere. Well, especially in the case of discretionary income, (i.e. baseball games, golf, etc.), if we realize that even though the players are making much less, but the owners choose not to lower their ticket prices, that discretionary income goes elsewhere. To assume that people would continue to frequent these events like lemmings, without regard to price, is to assume a lot of ignorance on the part of people. And the AMERICAN PEOPLE are MUCH smarter than that. You need look no further than all of the businesses out there competing for your dollar thru specially priced products, (2/1 dinners from restaurants, "Value Season" at theme parks, 4tix for $80 at Lowe's Motor Speedway this past week for the Nextel Cup Race, 4 pak tickets for baseball games: 4 tix, 4 hot dogs; 4 sodas), to KNOW that the business world is VERY aware of the intelligence of the buying public. "
I'll grant you one thing. It would be a PR nightmare if the players agreed to take a pay cut and the owners didn't lower prices. That is the only reason prices would decrease. I also purposely used an example of 1 ticket at 1000 dollars instead of 50 tickets at 2 dollars because of the dollar disparity. Of course you would rather have 10 at 1 dollar than 1 at 10 dollars because of the reasons that you listed. If you could make the same amount of money (all things included) off of 1 person as you could off of 100 then they would. Back to why I think that supply and demand set prices and not expenses. Back to the baseball example. Lets say that the players took the big pay cut and all the owners lowered prices as an act of good will. Baseball stadiums across the country would sell out as many more people could afford it (discresionary income?). The baseball owners would then raise prices to maximize income. If the stadium sells out at 10 dollars a ticket lets see what happens at 12 dollars a ticket. If it still sells out then they would go higher until the demand for game tickets met the supply that the stadiums could give. Obviously baseball has other factors involved like team performance, weather, ect. but you get the idea. Promotions are held to use up excess supply. Here in Houston there was a promotion for every Tuesday game (I think it was Tuesday) to bring more people to the park. Why was this done? Because Tuesday's are not a good day for games. Disney has the same capacity all year and thus the same supply. They offer discounts and "Package deal" when demand isn't up to supply. That is why packages are offered during the off season. You don't see big discounts being offered during Christmas do you? Now, if Disney raises prices then Demand will go down. The question is how much can they raise the prices without significantly decreasing demand. Can they raise it enough to offset the additional payroll without decreasing demand? I don't know but I would be willing to conduct the study if they paid for it. It's about time I use that Marketing degree I earned.
Heck, I already bought my tickets. Let them raise prices all they want. The CM's deserve it. Raise prices so high that only 100 people a day go to teh parks during my stay. Just don't raise prices on concessions and souvineers before my trip. We leave in 22 days!!! :hammer: :hammer: :hammer:
I'll grant you one thing. It would be a PR nightmare if the players agreed to take a pay cut and the owners didn't lower prices. That is the only reason prices would decrease. I also purposely used an example of 1 ticket at 1000 dollars instead of 50 tickets at 2 dollars because of the dollar disparity. Of course you would rather have 10 at 1 dollar than 1 at 10 dollars because of the reasons that you listed. If you could make the same amount of money (all things included) off of 1 person as you could off of 100 then they would. Back to why I think that supply and demand set prices and not expenses. Back to the baseball example. Lets say that the players took the big pay cut and all the owners lowered prices as an act of good will. Baseball stadiums across the country would sell out as many more people could afford it (discresionary income?). The baseball owners would then raise prices to maximize income. If the stadium sells out at 10 dollars a ticket lets see what happens at 12 dollars a ticket. If it still sells out then they would go higher until the demand for game tickets met the supply that the stadiums could give. Obviously baseball has other factors involved like team performance, weather, ect. but you get the idea. Promotions are held to use up excess supply. Here in Houston there was a promotion for every Tuesday game (I think it was Tuesday) to bring more people to the park. Why was this done? Because Tuesday's are not a good day for games. Disney has the same capacity all year and thus the same supply. They offer discounts and "Package deal" when demand isn't up to supply. That is why packages are offered during the off season. You don't see big discounts being offered during Christmas do you? Now, if Disney raises prices then Demand will go down. The question is how much can they raise the prices without significantly decreasing demand. Can they raise it enough to offset the additional payroll without decreasing demand? I don't know but I would be willing to conduct the study if they paid for it. It's about time I use that Marketing degree I earned.
Heck, I already bought my tickets. Let them raise prices all they want. The CM's deserve it. Raise prices so high that only 100 people a day go to teh parks during my stay. Just don't raise prices on concessions and souvineers before my trip. We leave in 22 days!!! :hammer: :hammer: :hammer:
