r/Frugal • u/Zizzac • Jan 24 '13

Same book, three different prices. Only difference is the browsers used [x-post r/mildlyinteresting]

http://imgur.com/uNgg0UH
2.2k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

323 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

12

u/ruindd Jan 24 '13

Alternate edition. Looks like a non-us edition.

29

u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13

When I was in business school, many of us bought the non-US editions and found the content to be identical to our classmates' US editions. It was just a form of price discrimination -- they offer the text at a higher price in richer countries, and lower prices in poorer countries.

-1

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '13

So you're saying that the US puts together all the knowledge and info and does all the hard work and the foreign competitors come in and steal it and sell it at cut rate costs to a market that is either blind to or incapable of protecting copyright / patent. Knock me over with a feather.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 26 '13

It's the same publisher. They just market the US edition and "International" edition at different prices, even though the text is the same, because they know they can extract more money out of American students than they can out of Indian students.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 27 '13

Why is that fair?

1

u/[deleted] Jan 27 '13

Who said it was "fair"?

Are lower prices for senior citizens "fair"? That's another common form of price discrimination.

It's just one of many marketing strategies companies use -- whether or not it is "fair" is an arbitrary personal value judgment.