Transformers retail prices in 2012 unchanged despite exchange rate

[griffin]

Figures are from...

Retail prices are known.
Tax rates are known.
Wholesale price is either known (here from 2 years ago) or calculated (US, based on the fairly standard ratio distributors have as their RRP from their Wholesale price). I've imported as a wholesaler in the past, and have also seen domestic prices from various sources.

The wholesale price was only broken up into three components (actual cost to Hasbro at the Factory (blue), the cost for Hasbro to get the product from the Factory to each country (green), and profit from what they then sell them to the retailers for (yellow)) to show that the first two factors are the same for Australia and for America, leaving the variable I'm trying to highlight (Hasbro's profit per figure) as being the big difference between the two countries.
Hasbro are never going to come out and say exactly what the cost breakdown is, and I had to utilise figures revealed on that recent Hasbro Factory article (which included a document that showed us that the production cost to Hasbro at the factory is 20.14% of the RRP before tax in America). But since the total cost of the blue and green are essentially the same for US and Australia, the yellow blocks are the only variable... keeping in mind that the Yellow block had to be enough to cover "R&D, staffing, shareholders and future projects, etc", based on how cheaply we now know they produce the toys now in the factories.

Basically, we know enough of the factors to extrapolate approximate values and even eliminate elements claimed to be factors. But unless Hasbro comes out with official figures (which they wont), this is about as much as we know from what has been leaked or revealed.

If it was just a small margin of difference, I wouldn't be so obsessed about highlighting this. But we have years of Hasbro US getting rich off the weakening US$, by not passing on savings to non-US markets.

Can you think of any other cost elements that could make our prices so significantly higher than America? If I've missed some variable between the two countries, I'll fix up the figures.


(IMO though, theoretically it shouldn't be cheaper to express post the exact same items from the other side of the world, than what it costs here domestically... when we know that the unavoidable price factors aren't much different between the two countries)