Too busy to read?

The shoddy quality of most airport departure lounges across the world is surely part of the same phenomenon. If the free departure areas became decent places to spend time - last time I went through Heathrow's brand-new Terminal Five, I couldn't find a working power socket for my laptop - then airlines would no longer be able to sell business-class tickets on the strength of their 'executive' lounges.

IBM's 'LaserWriter E', a low-end laser printer, turned out to be exactly the same piece of equipment as their high-end 'LaserWriter' - except that there was an additional chip in the cheaper version to slow it down. The most effective way for IBM to price-target their printers was to design and mass-produce a single printer, then sell it at two prices. But of course to get anyone to buy the expensive printer they had to slow down the cheap one. It seems wasteful, but presumably it was cheaper for IBM to do this than design and manufacture two completely different printers.

That's not coincidence. Services and convenience products are the most fertile grounds for price-targeting strategies, because they don't leak. The really great pricing tricks take place on airlines, in restaurants and cocktail bars (not many bookshops have a 'happy hour'), in supermarkets and at tourist attractions.