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In Reply to: RE: I seriously doubt anybody here is unaware of this. nt posted by Rick W on November 22, 2015 at 18:55:14
I'm not so sure everyone knew. I'm also surprised the discount could go as high as 70%. I figured 40%, maybe 50%.
Follow Ups:
> I'm also surprised the discount could go as high as 70%.
Not what I wrote, which was that the accommodation price for reviewers is
generally the same as the price a retailer pays, ie, 40%-70% _of_ the retail
price, depending on the kind of product.
There are also conditions attached to such purchases, such as that the
reviewer not sell the product for a certain length of time, or that if
he does wish eventually to sell it, that the manufacturer be allowed to
buy it back for the price paid for it.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
That seems entirely reasonable since the manufacturer does not want to undercut his distributors. That could get them real mad if they found out. The buyback option is of course effectively a loan, the money merely a deposit to be returned in exchange for the equipment. The loan could therefore be indefinite. The purchaser gets the free use of the equipment for as long as he wants although inflation does take its toll on the value of money over an extended time. It is in the interest of the manufacturer to remain on the best possible terms with as many reviewers who are widely read as possible since a review can strongly influence sales.
Of all reviewers and critics in the world, the wine reviewer Robert Parker was thought by many to be the greatest critic of anything. His reviews literally drove the market and could kill off the sales of some highly respected brand names while boosting the price of lesser known brands to the stratosphere. He made a lot of people very angry at him, he ruined their game. He also exposed what he called the incestuous relationship between French wine negociants and British wine merchants. The alternative critics who arose to prominence were from Wine Spectator Magazine including James Suckling and James Laube. Interestingly they didn't always agree on the merits of particular products with Parker giving them wildly different numerical ratings. But even where they agreed on the numbers, their descriptions were often so different you wouldn't know by that alone they were describing the same product. Parker and Wine Spectator relied on their unquestioned integrity to give their genuine opinions, Wine Spectator the result of single blind tests, Parker not blind tests at all.
...the higher discounts for accommodation pricing are usually on cables and accessories.
Your wine review comparisons are interesting - because of Parker's tastes, many wine makers changed the style of their wines, making them bigger, bolder, more alcoholic and fruitier to please him to get higher ratings. (Personally, I find WS more to my tastes but if you look at my latest post on the Wine Forum here, their ratings are not definitive by any means.)
In that regard HP at TAS favored midrange musical accuracy, imaging and soundstaging which revitalized the tubed electronic industry in the 1980s.
But at the end of the day, any reviewer or publication has only its ethics and integrity to sell their reviews.
It doesn't matter if the reviews are sighted are blind if they don't agree with what you taste or hear.
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