The “women’s tax” is a real thing. Products and services tend to cost more when they are gendered, meaning they are labeled to sell to women, or they are painted pink. There are plenty of examples in this video from The Daily Share. Commenters immediately pointed out that men pay more for car insurance because they cause more accidents, which is kind of like long-term care insurance for women. If we could get men to drive better or women to die younger, things would even out, but neither sex really wants to make that sacrifice. As for the products, I learned long ago that buying merchandise in the men’s aisle (unscented, please) can save money over time. The dollars add up fast when shopping for children’s clothing. -via Time
Comments (6)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/learnvest/2012/05/15/the-woman-tax-how-gendered-pricing-costs-women-almost-1400-a-year/
The betamax died out in the mid 80's do to the same reasons MiniDisc, and 7" audio disks died. Sony kept the tech proprietary. The tapes, discs, whatever material had to be bought along with the machines, from Sony ALONE. At Sony's prices. Which are, even today, still at the top of the bar for consumer electronics. The VHS was licensed freely and had very strong competition driving down costs on both the machines and consumables along with raising competition for features on the machines. But Sony tech stagnated and did not continue to keep up with feature upgrades since they were not making the sales.
This simply a case of keeping too tight a hold and not having a strong enough brand to carry the price tag. Apple runs this risk as well. And, as competition increases giving other devices and OSes equal footing, Apple continues to loose market share. JUST LIKE Sony. It's simply a case of market econ.