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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jing Qian who wrote (13133)	7/29/1999 11:06:00 PM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

This issue is not trivial, here in Fremont CA $39.95/month is the only reason 90% of people don't sign up for ATHM. Price is an issue....but not the only issue (people sometimes spend $70/month for cable tv with premium channels), I have sat at the diner table with couples deciding whether they wanted @Home or not and an additional factor is that people tend to want to limit those things that they view as vices. A great source of marital discord comes from one spouse being on the computer a lot. ("He [or she] is always on that damned computer"- I've heard this in my own house as well as friends houses) I've even heard single people say they wouldn't get it because it would suck them in even further. For years, myself, and several of my friends refused to get cable tv for the same reason. We did not want to spend any more time than we already did in front of a tv, so why get one that was more enticing. People limit their vices by making them less desirable and harder to get to.

To: Jing Qian who wrote (13133)	7/29/1999 11:43:00 PM
From: ahhaha	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

Ahhaha, AT&T or ATHM won't be the first company to reduce the price to win a bigger market share. They already have most of the market so how is this pertinent? When you have the lion's share and the market is nascent, you don't cut price. You might even raise it. That can't be done for appearance reasons. Att has enough bad PR going. AMZN cut their best sellers by half for a reason: Choking the competitors and grabbing the attention of more users. This is not accurate. They did it to preserve share. That's a far cry from choking. They know the competition is going to get some of the territory, so they try to hang on. They also did it because the competition was undercutting them and was taking share so they wanted to slow the attrition. Consider that if a buyer sees AMZN cutting their prices, wouldn't a buyer then be more inclined to shop around? That's what I would do and I'll bet that's what your friends do. It won't be too hard to imagine ATHM does the same. It is impossible. Why give up the serve if you haven't faulted? What share would lowering the price get? The share that makes Att a formal monopoly? This issue is not trivial, here in Fremont CA $39.95/month is the only reason 90% of people don't sign up for ATHM. ATHM doesn't agree with you. The problem with your straw poll is that it isn't representative. I don't mean in the adequate statistical sample space way, but in the way that the people you've polled don't know what it is they claim they don't want. It is just mindless prejudice against something new. Later they will deny they ever had such attitudes and they will think you made it up to make them look bad.

To: Jing Qian who wrote (13133)	7/30/1999 9:40:00 PM
From: ahhaha	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

Engineer, you're right. the consortium should lower prices. I applied my own criterion and made a share case for lowering prices. It's valid. It chokes the competition! They should do it immediately. What rate depends upon the future projected cost to maintain the system. The basic service rate is like the same with telephone service. The $20/mo. rate is a good psychological point to start and even though in the long run the instantaneous cost to maintain may be $5/mo they can sit on that $20. Aside from whatever comes from share increase the advertising power of it and the political weight of cheap makes the revenue enhancement net of costs superfluous. You could say that it is impact advertising and the impact could sway communities to forego quibbling about political correctness. You definitely would see fewer signatures on petitions. This strategy is similar to what Standard Oil did in 1903 to stabilize oil production. They cut prices 30% across the board to drive out the thousand small inefficent producers who were making the business impossible for everyone. The predictable response from the public and then from Congress was "smash the monopolizing oil companies", so this can be treacherous.