Inferior goods

I'm interested by the idea that inferior goods are those that are perceived as inferior, for whatever reason. They may not actually be, objectively, inferior, but if they are perceived as inferior, then consumers are willing to pay less for them. I thought about this at the announcement of the new iPad mini today.

The new iPad mini is equal to or worse than its Android-powered competition in the 7-inch tablet market (Kindle Fire HD and Nexus 7). But it costs 65% more than the competition, which is a huge premium for being part of the Apple ecosystem. (And as we have seen, the ecosystem is a huge part of the tablet experience.) But as I thought more about it, I wondered if Apple made the price high as a conscious decision to separate it from those other 7-inch tablets. In other words, this is not a cheapo mini tablet that you are buying just because you can't afford an iPad, this IS an iPad. I wondered if maybe the price itself is part of the perception of quality and superiority. "Oh, it's more expensive, it must be better."

I don't think this would work for news products, mostly because of what (diffusion guru) Rogers calls observability. Nobody really sees you reading "fancy" news the way they could see your fancy iPad every time you conspicuously whip it out of its case. So the perception of superior/inferior rests entirely on personal preference, which could be based on any number of factors. I think it would be fun to develop a survey that would try to determine which factors of a person's experience with a news product make up their preference for it. I'm sure work has been done in this area already, but the news product landscape is changing so quickly that there's always room for an update.