Packaging Matters

A student directed me to a post earlier this week on the Freakonomics blog, in which Steve Levitt asks, "Should Apple Burn Its Economic Textbooks?" The post considers whether a more profitable strategy might have been to not charge such a high price for the iPhone initially, to avoid irritating the early adopters with such a quick price decrease and ultimately offering to rebate them half of the decline.

Leaving aside that the appropriate disposal is to sell the books, if disposal is what's required, the answer to the question is "no." Apple's economics textbooks are not necessarily wrong, but they certainly seem to be lonely. Give them some company, maybe a marketing textbook or two.

Products don't always sell themselves. Advertising works. Marketing works. Packaging matters. An ironic lesson for Apple to learn--we thought they had it mastered. Perhaps it has been digitally remastered. We'll know when the iWhatever is released.