We buy things all the time, and some times we are not satisfy with our products, so we demand products with more functions and features. However there is a price we need to pay for those demands, but we pay way more for those extra functions and unique features than we should. But how many extra functions and special features are worth the money we paid? Not many, so offering extra functions and special features have became a great method for the marketers and companies to earn extra cash from customers. This phenomenon is extremely common in the car industry, both normal cars and high end cars companies use the same strategy. The car manufactures charge a lot more for a car just because they offer customers some extra functions and features. In the following I will talk about some specific examples.

Everybody knows Audi, it looks cool, run fast and German engineered. Many men including myself dream to drive an Audi if we are wealthy one day. But before we get into the beauty of Audi let’s talk about the price and the features Audi offers. Let’s take the A4 for example, the MSRP for A4 is $37,800 which is not so expensive for a luxury car. However let’s take a look how much a customer needs to pay if he or she wants some more functions. If a customer wants a 6 speed manual, the customer needs to pay 2000 dollars more. Therefore it is 1000 dollars more for each extra transmission. How about for those cusomters who want to enjoy driving? And they want both manual and automatic? Then the customer will need to pay another 2000 dollars more. So a customer needs to pay 4000 dollars more just for two more extra functions, meanwhile the horsepower stays the same. However the car will have virtually the same speed if it has the same horsepower, and without a good horse power a drive can never experience the awesomeness of speeding. A4 also offers customers with the quattro premium version, however if a customer choose the quattro premium version, they will not get  the tpitronic (both automatic and manual transmission) feature but with 6 speed. However the customer has to pay 6000 more for quattro premium, and the customer is still getting the same horsepower. So are those features really worth that much? does a car really feel different with those extra features? The answer is no, for most of the drivers on the road today, 95% of them are just normal drivers, and within those 95% normal drivers another 90% dirvers are driving on automatic, and a lot of the drivers can’t even feel the differences with those add-on features. therefore those extra features are not worth the money you are paying.

Another example is  the gaming industry, whenever a great game comes out, there will always be a collection edition or a special edition, and if a customer wants the special edition, he or she will need to pay a lot more. Let’s take a look at how much more the customer needs to pay for his or her special edition game. Recently Microsoft luanched a new Halo serie named Halo Reach, and it is a big hit. First there are a lot of Halo fans, second the story plot happened before Earth got invaded by alients, so players who are insterested in the entire story line of Halo are extemely likely to buy that game. The game also has great graphic and sound effect. However if a customer is a serious Halo fan he or she needs to have a deep pocket, because the legendary edition is way more expensive than you think. The normal edition is sold for $59.99 however the legendary edition is sold for $119.99 almost twice as expensive as the normal edition. And let’s take a look at what does it feature. First of all the legendary edition offers a statue of the Noble team, second it offers a special armor effect when player plays the game, third it offers a really big box which is the container of the game and the statue. As a result Halo fans are paying $60 more which doubles the normal price to get a toy statue, a special effect when playing multiplayer, and a really big box which contain the game. Is it really worth it? From my perspective no.

Do customers really get what they pay for? I don’t think so, companies and marketers always try to lead customers into trap like this. Customers are paying way too much for those little features. Therefore as customers we need to carefully weight what we pay for and what we get out of it, and always try to stay away from a trap like this.