Given I’ve been teaching about Willingness-to-Pay and firms making decisions about the level of benefits they offer potential customers (a.k.a. The Value Proposition), it was intriguing to see this quote regarding the market for counterfeit iPhones:
“The customers) generally want to have something that looks like the real thing, so they can say that they have an iPhone”.
The article was heralding the push to shut down the importation of fake iPhones into Australia.
I am curious as to which features this segment is valuing (i.e. is willing to pay for) in the fakes and which they are not.
Are these fakes anything more than a normal 2G phone in a fancy case? Or do they have 3G capacity? Or, even worse are they nothing more than a shell (like a toyphone that toddlers wonder around with)?
Do they have any “apps” and user-friendliness? Or would a purchaser just pretend to be touching and dragging stuff around?
What might Apple learn from consumers’ behaviour here? Should they seek to address some of these lower-end users’ needs?
Would a genuine iPhone model with pared back features and lower price broaden their market penetration? Or might it hurt their brand caché? Is there a Shuffle equivalent opportunity in this market?
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