Anti-Capitalist Sentiment (with some morality)

[CoccoBill]

1) You're stipulating that increasing prices (and shafting consumers) increases revenue, but that is not a given.
Shafted consumers tend to lose customer loyalty.

No, I'm just saying that increasing prices is one of the 4 available options a business has when facing competition. I put it at number 1 because, well, you just (theoretically) increase the price and that's it, immediately more money coming in. Clearly you can't just keep doing that, but economically, this option is as good as printing money.

2) You're stipulating that selling a worse product for the same price will increase revenue, but that is also not a given.
(see above)

I'm saying cutting production costs, be it labor, manufacturing, marketing, materials etc. is the 2nd easiest option in the arsenal, and guaranteed profits as long as your product does NOT decrease in quality, and no major extra costs are required to go through with it, such as lengthy company reorgs etc.

3) is really a corollary of 1) and 2), and could mitigate some lost customer loyalty if the ad campaign is successful, but again, if unsuccessful, then it will not increase revenue.
(Do you like my implicit definition of "successful" in terms of a marketing campaign?)

Yup, but I'd say it's the 3rd best option, if just raising prices or cutting costs are no longer an option. Marketing can cost significant amounts of money, take a long time and in no way guarantee you get results. Done right, though, it can be massive.

4) You're stipulating that if your customers like product A, then they will like product A+, and will pay the additional price for it. Again, this is not a given. Better is subjective and the changes you make to your products may not appeal to all of your customers. Furthermore, your customers may simply love your improvements, but cannot afford the additional costs associated with those improvements. They may well decide that their current product is "good enough."

You're of course right about everything you say. Making a better product is typically the most expensive option to increase profits. I would argue that it makes the least sense business-wise, since the other options above are faster, easier, cheaper and less risky. And unfortunately, it also seems to be the only option that actually benefits the customer.

Am I really this bad at explaining, does anyone get what I'm getting at? I do know I hate explaining myself and spelling things out, but I figured the text coming out of my face would at least be intelligible.