TV Shopping in Japan: ShamWow sold at tripled the original price

i don’t think it’s a ‘trick’ to make them pay more. these companies probably set the price at what they figure the market will bear.

i am always amazed at how easily japanese part with their money when paying premium prices for things. where does it come from? their strong egalitarian ethics? a pompous belief they are wealthy and can afford expensive things?

Wow that is a ridiculous price for the Magic Bullet. My wife and I received one as a gift a while ago and it’s been pretty handy and reliable for more than two years. It’s really just a blender except it’s a little smaller than usual and I assume the cleanup is a little easier.

I wonder what the price difference was between the Japan and the US for Billy’s Boot Camp? That’s at least something that sparked a boom and made it into the mainstream broadcast space, though I think it was solely sold through infomercials in the US.

This is pure speculation, but rather than looking to the Japanese psyche for answers, I would guess the higher prices reflect a lower level of demand, as counter-intuitive as that sounds. Basically, the Japanese home shopping and infomercial markets are much smaller than America’s thanks to a lower rate of cable TV viewership (also, there are two or three home shopping networks on BS but their audience is also very limited). In that market, probably the only potential buyers will be housewives on the wealthier end of the income spectrum who have cable and watch it enough so that they end up putting on the shopping channels. On top of that, it’s probably much cheaper to get airtime on Japanese cable than in the US, and anyway those infomercials are already completed save for the quickie Japanese dubbing. So in that environment why not charge a higher price and collect some excess revenue in a market you weren’t even thinking about when you first started marketing the product?

Or alternatively, they might be competing for space with venerable infomercial offerings like fish oil pills and aojiru. Those are pretty damn pricey too so maybe the consumers need to see a hefty price tag to think the product is worth anything.