Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Retailing Among Thieves
DVD pirating in China is big business. I have no idea what the total dollar value is but DVD storefronts are everywhere. Shops compete on value-added services such as location, return policy, convenience of store hours, and quality of piracy. Under this hyper-competitive market, the consumer apparently wins. I took a quick peek into a "legitimate" music shop the other day and the retail price of the new Rolling Stones CD which looked official (it had a hologram on the packaging but this could very easily be fake as well) was 20 RMB or $2.50 which is about the same as cleaning one sleeve and the collar of my dress shirt.
