Jay wrote:

I have a Garmin product myself, and its a really a piece of kit, but
my question is what are the reasons that make it advantagious for a
company to set this type of pricing policy?

Instead of OSHKOSH ( spread out over many many square miles )
lets say you went to a trade show in an arena.

There is the Garmin booth and as you walked around you realized that
there were also a dozen Garmin dealers with their own smaller booths
spread out throughout the arena.

Now Garmin is selling the hot XYZ unit for $1000 but the small print
says that dealers may sell for less.

Your frugal and want to save a buck so what do you do.

You start walking and talking.

Now after you've gone to all or most of the independent dealers and
weaseled ten bucks off this one, and then played him against another
dealer for another fifteen bucks, and then munched a hot dog as you
bargained for even more money off from the third, sixth, ninth,
fifteenth, dealer, etc., getting sore feet in the process and starting
to hear the occaissional dealer tell you to F OFF because they are sick
of you and a couple hundred others playing that game, what are you
going to do.

Well sooner of later common sense and those tired feet of yours are
going to tell you that you've gotten the best deal possible and it's
time to cut bait and put your money where your mouth is.

And if you finally get that absolutely spectacular deal for lets say
$875 and while gloating to your friends about how it was worth all that
time and energy, someone else slides by and shows you their receipt for
the same product for lets say $845 perhaps from the very same person
you bought your unit from, what are you going to do.

I'll tell you what your going to do..... The same as everybody else in
the same boat is gonna do.

YOU ARE GOING TO GO AND BITCH AT GARMIN.

Now I don't know what city you live in but if there is more than one
McDonalds, KFC, Safeway, Piggly Wiggly, Qwikie Mart,.... do you ever
notice that they all sell their products for the same price in the same
market area.

Try going to a 7-11 and offer the owner 50 cents less for a pack of
smokes or you will go to another 7-11 and see what they say.

This is why all of those food vendors at OSHKOSH are brought together
for a little chat from the organizers and are reminded that under their
vendors agreement with OSHKOSH that there is to be consistency in
the pricing of common items like, water, corn dogs cheeseburger, etc.

You might not like paying 4 bucks for a jug of water but you would like
it a lot less if you found someone a half mile away selling it for 2.

So if nothing else you know that when you walk around OSHKOSH
and your feet are sore, the kids are bitching, and your thirsty, that
since various vendors are selling an identical product, that at least
they all are selling it at an identical price.