Quote Originally Posted by DELTAprime View Post
OK Griff, that adds a new wrinkle to the argument. A well known problem they have in America is Walmart and to lesser extent Amazon's predatory practices where all they care about is their profit, not their suppliers viability. Walmart is well known to squeeze suppliers like Hasbro so much that they can't make a profit. The supplier then can choose not to do business with Walmart which is very bad idea with how huge Walmart is, or they can take what little cash Walmart will offer for their product. Unfortunately they can't then goto Target, Kmart or TRU and say "we will sell the item to you for $4 more than we sell to Walmart". That won't fly either.

Basically if those figures are accurate then Hasbro is undercharging America and really should be charging them something similar to our prices just to make a profit. May I suggest adding to your article on pricing in AU vs US some language that points out that thanks to Walmart squeezing it's suppliers Hasbro may well be undercharging its American customers and not necessarily over charging us.

Do a Google search for "walmart forces suppliers to lower prices" for references.
It's not just toys that face this issue in Australia. Why do you think that we just held an enquiry into software prices where Adobe and Apple were forced to justify at an enquiry why Australians pay up to twice as much for digital downloads of their content? Gues what? They couldn't!! Shock! Horror!!

This has nothing to do with Australian wages. The car industry is the same. Take a brand new Japanes car, a corolla. In the USA, a new corolla is $16,800 before all your dealer charges. (I just looked at the Toyota USA site). The same model in Aus is $19,990. Almost $3K difference for no reason at all. Take a more expensive car like a WRX. USA price $25,995. Aus price $41,000! For the SAME car! How do car manufacturers justify that? Shipping distance is about equal, cars are the same execpt for RHD/LHD.

These prices arise form the fact that we are an isolated market with less buying power. Our isolation has also in th epast made it easier for international companies to exploit us as we really had no idea what other countries pay for the same items we do.

I don't disagree that some wages in Australia have grown to unsustainable levels in the last decade or so, but that it not the cause of us paying considerably more for TFs than the USA. We have always paid more.