5 October 2009

Companies are stupid.

People ares dumb, too. But companies, being made up of large numbers of people, are exponentially more idiotic. I will now provide two examples of pea-brained behaviour in the corporate world.

One: dynamic pricing. If you don't know what this is, it's simply explained, a bit more complicated to rationalize: the more popular something is, the higher the price.

This almost makes sense, in a universe of finite space. There's only so much gold, say, in the world. Those who want gold must pay a premium price for it in order to have it, and those who cannot afford the new price, or do not think the new price is worth the amount of gold they would get in return, do without. Simple economic theory, right?

Sort of. The idea of dynamic pricing is an interesting notion, especially when applied immediately. If you could adjust prices on the fly at any given second depending on demand, you could make a fortune, assuming the customers don't catch on to what you're doing. They might wonder why Item A costs more than it did yesterday, but since it's the new hot item, they'll likley pay the slightly increased price anyway, at least until Item B becomes the must-have. Then you lower the price of Item A, raise it on Item B, and still rake in the cash.

This becomes a little more obvious, and a bit shadier, when applied, to, I don't know, just an example off the top of my head, music.

Downloadable music, even. Downloadable, electronic media that, as far as the state of the universe is concerned, there is an infinite supply of. But for some reason, some people decide that because it's popular, it must cost more - for a certain limited time.

Theoretically, this means they rake in more profit as long as they can keep on top of the trend. In reality ... hard to say. I think it encourages people to steal, as they're not willing to be ripped off by an additional thirty cents just because what they like is suddenly popular. Or people will make note of the song they like and wait until it comes down in price before they make the purchase - which makes the whole process of keeping track of what's popular a somewhat more wonky process.

Admittedly, people are brainless. A large majority will probably pay the inflated price simply because they want the song. But the company is basically calling people morons by initiating the dynamic pricing in the first place. And insulting your customer base is, by and large, not the wisest move.

Two: DRM. Of any kind.

My one example is recent, and what spawned this post in the first place. Say I buy a game. Any game, really. But one game in particular. This game insists that I sign onto a service - which is only caused such because it provides helpful information and data to people, even if those people are not the customer. But the game insists, so I comply. But, in addition to having to run two pieces of software just to get the game to run, I also have to make sure the installation DVD is inserted into my drive.

Think about this for a minute. The game insists that I run a second application in order to verify my identity and that the game is a bona-fide copy. And yet I need the installation DVD? Why? No, wait, don't tell me: because you need to verify that it's a legitimate copy of the game. Why can't the other application do that for me? What if the DVD gets scratched, or lost, or set on fire in a fit of rage? Will they replace the DVD for me so that I can continue to play? Of course not.

Let me make this clear to all those half-wits that design DRM systems: if you can view it, it can be copied. Period. That's it. Once something has been rendred digital, there's no going back. It's going to spread, and there's nothing anyone anywhere can do about it. A majority of the people, if you're nice and friendly and trust the consumer to do the right thing, will pay you for the benefit of having a licensed copy. There will be some thefts. Do you know what happens when you make it so that it's actually harder to play or view something by inserting DRM? More people steal. Not because they want to, but because the hacked and cracked versions just work.

That's all people want: stuff that just works. No ifs, no ands, no buts, no complicated dohickey that plugs into the computer, or requires a retina scan, or any kind of security measure that they don't get a benefit from.

Companies: stop being concerned about who's stealing, and start being concerned about the people paying for your product. You're never going to be able to stop the former, but you can improve the experience for the latter.