More expensive is more appealing?

It's a pretty common pricing strategy in economics. Raise the price of a good to create a special/desirable aura around the product, generate more interest and, ultimately, more sales. The example I recall from economics classes is that of a jewelry maker who priced her creations fairly; in other worlds, by charging enough mark-up to sustain her shop, but not so much as to gouge the customer. The jewelry did not sell well and she was at a risk of having her store closed, when it was suggested to her that she raise the price. It seemed counter-intuitive, but when she did, her business took off and she did not have to close the shop.

Psychologically and emotionally, most consumers equate higher price with higher quality. Of course, this is not always true, but we cannot deny that this notion exists. Through advertising, we are conditioned to equate an expensive item with rarity, desirability, superiority and uniqueness. While the cheaper items carry the stigma of being poorly made, common, plentiful and sub-par. Is this actually true? In some cases, yes, in others, no. It just depends on the item in question.

The same is true when it comes to BJDs. Some higher priced dolls are very well made, uniquely constructed, elaborately sculpted and made of the highest quality materials. Others in the same price range - not so much. Similarly, cheaper BJDs can be wonderfully made dolls or they can be dinky, poorly engineered and/or sculpted without much detail.

Personally, when I see an expensive doll, I cannot deny that I automatically assume that it is well-made and desirable. However, that's an emotional response that I am able to address via research of, more or less, objective facts about the company and its product. Though the years, I've been both disappointed in very expensive dolls and pleasantly surprised by cheaper ones, so I am careful not to buy into preconceived judgements of both expensive and cheaper dolls.

 

I think higher prices do make people want them more.. Most products out there do not cost that much to make and the price of production does not come anywere near the price of the peice sold. There are people that buy cloths for 100s of dollars and probably do not realize that the actual production costs of such cloths is quite a bit less. Now I know companys need to make a profit of some kind.. but usually they get one hell of a profit line off of these things.. The same goes for most toys and I would not doubt ABJDs as well. The ones done by hand I can understand their prices somewhat.. because it takes a lot of time and patiance, but the ones that are made on production lines (some are machine made) are probably worth way less than what they sell it for.. there is no one slaveing away and the materials are probably not as expencive as one might think... but because other ABJDs cost is high they will list their dolls at a high price as well.

When looking for ABJDs my self I look at the pictures before I look at the price. Then I hunt around and see if others have this doll and prolly sarch for complaints here on DoA. THEN I look at the price more seriously. If the doll really takes me away I will probably try and save for it. I have liked many cheaper BJDs. I have not found anything unapealing yet with my cheaper dolls. Heck I will even buy dolls at walmart if they are pretty enough or really awesome.. Like I am kind of in to the Monster High dolls xD.. Price does not usually get me down.. unless its a limited and I KNOW I wont be able to save in time.. OR.. a doll that is no longer in production but they list it on their site anyway (>:C I HATE when companys do this..)

 

I base my decision of purchasing on whether or not I love the doll. Not on price. So this would affect me little to none. :P Frankly even if they were cheaper I'd still love them as much.

 

All BJDs at this point are expensive. $100 for a doll is expensive, for heavens' sake. I want BJDs & figure the prices will be $200-$1000 per doll because that's what they are - rare, limited, difficult to produce, imported, w/unique sculpts. At this point if someone offered a SD for $100 or less I'd immediatly try to find out what was wrong w/it.
I look at what the doll looks like, all the feedback on the doll itself & the reputation of the company when deciding to buy a doll. Then I check to see if I can afford it. There are some very pricey dolls out there that I love which would not fit into my doll story, & others that are relatively cheap that also won't fit.
I agree about pricing tho - I sold clothing at Ren Faires for years & it always worked better to be in the same range as other booths rather than cheaper - people just assumed something was wrong if noticeably cheaper.

 

For me it wouldn't change a thing about how much I like BJDs, I would probably have a lot more, too, because I like them so much. ^^; But what I like about them so much is what I can do with them. There are other kinds of BJDs, that aren't appealing at all. ABJDs are the ones I like, and well... those happen to be the expensive ones. ^^;
I actually feel that if they were less expensive, I'd also go into modding them and experimenting. Since they wouldn't be that expensive I could get multiple bodies to experiment on. Which would be a new side of the hobby I never felt I could get into for the fear of horribly messing thing up.
The only thing I see negative about that is, like the OP said, that people wouldn't value them that much. For me that would also be a bit true, since I now value my dolls whole and like I said I would get multiple doll bodies to experiment on, so that value will be lost. I'm more for heads. I find their whole personality I thought of in there. But tossing the bodies around then would also be a sign of not valuing them as much as I do now.
There was that discussion whether to give BJDs to children. well, that wouldn't be a problem then. But it would probably be a real pain to see their dolls' faceups or how they treat them. Not that I say that only children do that. Sometimes it really hurts looking at modifications and faceups. Let the dolls come to be more available due to lower prices and I think I'd pass on visiting the gallery. ^^; But then nobody would really care and just move on to the next doll to mod and paint.
I'd fear for collectors, though. There would be no real point for a collector to have them, since they would be all over the place. Only thing that might change that would be LEs or time. Other doll lines make a good example of how much the price could go up, like LE barbies or the like. But I think it would scare away many collectors nontheless.

 

I've wondered this at times as well. I think the price is part of what makes them appealing. After all, we tend to want things we can't get, or in this case, things that're harder to get because they're expensive.

But I won't go as far as to say more expensive dolls (like limiteds, or say, fullsets) are more appealing. I'm not going to go further for this, cos we all know the whole "your choice, my choice" argument. ;D

Overall though, the whole mindset where we associate more effort or quality with higher priced items is quite prevalent, so perhaps if bjds were indeed cheaper, some of the appeal would diminish, especially as more and more people get them, and they become more common. 1 thing is, if it's cheaper, there's a chance people would get fullsets, since they'll no longer cost THAT much, and perhaps the default faceups, especially for beginners, which makes the customisable aspect of bjds moot. I'm writing this because in the local doll community, there was a period of time when there was a sudden hype about dolls, from the cosplay community (or lolita/jrock/other japanese subculture. I'm not very sure about this part of the story), and because there was a local shop where you could get a certain company's dolls (which were relatively cheaper than say, luts), there was a sudden flood of people with these dolls. They basically looked similar because they were mostly default. I'm not too sure if I'm biased in recounting this, because personally I didn't like that with the cheaper dolls (talking about price here, not quality/company) available, some people started to treat the bjds as ...well, not as how I'll treat them, which is fine, but somehow I always felt that they got the dolls cos they looked cool and were Cheap, with a capital C. I think what I'm trying to say is that if bjds were cheaper, maybe we won't spend so much time doing what we do now, like taking photos of them, sewing etc, because they become less... precious, when the lower price make them more common.

Of course, it depends on how much worth YOU personally place on the doll. Obviously, the more worth (not merely monetary worth) you see in a doll, the less the price matters. But what if, in a hypothetical situation, say, the bjd companies always sold dolls at 50% of what they do now, and we treat THAT as the norm, perhaps our whole perception would be different. Perhaps we'll all have more dolls, because we CAN get more dolls, and because of the larger family, perhaps we'll spend less time with photos, with customising EACH and every single doll. I'm not saying that people who have more dolls spend less time on bjds than those with less; I'm just suggesting that let's say you spend x hours on dolls weekly, that's unlikely to change in the long run even if you get more dolls, cos it's usually constrained by your real life work/studies/responsibilities, so if you get more dolls, chances are you'll spend less time per doll. The "you" used are general, and not refering to anyone, just saying.

 

I think you have to take competition into account. At what price do their products sell? It's a very fine line: sell your product at a lower price than average and people will assume something's wrong it. Sell your product at a higher price than average and people will look to other companies.
It also matters how many other options the buyer has. If a painting is priced at 10.000 dollar, but there are at least 20 other, similar paintings out there selling for less, the potential customer will probably get one of them instead.

With BJD's, I don't think a higher price will make a doll more appealing. I mean, you often hear: "That much?? Man, I could buy at least 3 SD's for that price!". If anything, a high price-tag will scare people away. In this hobby we are very much aware what the average price of a doll is and a 1000 dollar doll will have to come with plenty of extra's to justify its price-tag, otherwise people will turn to another company. There are too many other companies out there selling similar looking dolls - in short, there are too many options for customers - to ask a ridiculously high price.

 

A high price might appeal to some people who are more concerned with status than dolls, but I only buy dolls I really, really love. I always think it's a big plus if I happen to fall for a doll that is relatively inexpensive. It sort of makes up for the ones I fall for that are pricey. It's all about the doll itself for me, as I buy them for my own pleasure and don't worry about resale value.

 

To me I don't care about a doll's price. All of mine were very expensive, but that's just my bad luck, really. I would have been ecstatic if they only cost $100 as opposed to $600, $700, or $800. I chose them because they looked beautiful, not because they were so expensive.

 

I've ... never really even noticed this. But then, I usually fall in love with the doll mold first and then notice the price later. personally, I don't care if it's expensive or cheap, just as long as it's a mold I legitimately love and have to have. And even then, I would prefer it to be more on the affordable side, as long as it's still in decent quality.

 

I think the higher prices definitely add to the 'wow' factor, but for the majority of us on DoA I don't think it is a leading reason why we collect them. Personally I would still adore these dolls if they were $50 a pop (and probably have way too many, lol!) but for the people who have these things as status symbols, I could see that being a big part of the draw.

With the established market for BJDs where it's at now, if I saw an SD for $50 I would definitely wonder what was wrong with it. If they had all been that affordable when I came into the hobby I would... wonder where they had been all my life!

 

If the dolls were much cheaper it would be nice for us in a way but, I feel like there would be less innovation, less newer, better, more exotic sculpts coming out. That would be really sad. It seems to me like if the profit margin were really low the artists couldn't afford to keep spending their time making dolls and would move on to more lucrative artistic projects.
Also, it's true, I do find the more expensive dolls more appealing. I don't know why but whenever I see a doll I like and go to look it up on the company website it is almost always on the higher end of the price range. I recently saw a doll that I liked in SD size that ended up being $250 and I thought something must be wrong with it (even though, that is not tha-at cheap or anything). I also find that often on the cheaper doll company's websites the faceups and photography is not as good which causes me confusion as to what the dolls actually look like.

 

I've got a lot of limited, expensive dolls. Personally, I wish they were all FREE! (I've got two dolls for free and I love them the same as the rest of my dolls.)

Basically, the price doesn't make them more appealing to me at all! I wish they were as cheap as cheap can be! BUT I understand that some things cost money, and so I will pay the price if I want the doll.

As for price making something sell more... I totally understand the theory. I am an artist and pricing artwork is just crazy. It's pretty much from how low you can go to how high your market will support. A huge range. And sometimes it's true that people won't value something that is too cheap. They think-- why is THAT particular thing so much cheaper than the rest? Could something be wrong with it? --That's understandable enough.

I just know that I am not that way. I will value something that's free or outrageously expensive for what it is worth to me. As others have said, I buy the dolls that really appeal to me, and that's the bottom line. I seriously wish that they weren't so costly, because my wallet is constantly crying, but what can I do?

I can see that working hard for something might make someone bond more. But again, that doesn't work in my case. I bond pretty easily--whether I work hard for the doll or not.

Again, maybe for some, but I have limiteds and I have dolls I've got for free or for less, and I love them all. I buy what I like... not what is expensive. I'm actually a bit of a cheap-skate at times--but not when it comes to dolls. I know I have to pay to get what I want. But I don't think PRICE adds OR subtracts from the doll itself.

I totally do NOT CARE about unique... or about how many people are in the hobby or why they are in the hobby.

I totally DO NOT CARE why people buy dolls or if they treasure them or not. That's their business.

My take is that there are people who MAY pay attention to how much a thing costs and think this matters in other ways than just cost. But they are free to do that.

I think most people here like the dolls because they like the dolls--and nevermind the price. At least, I hope that's true.

 

I think the doll him/herself is what we really need no focus on.
If you don't love a doll you won't be trying hard to decorate him/her.
Then the doll simply won't look beautiful, no matter how expensive he/she is.

 

I really see that kind of pricing in the art world but when it comes to things I buy I was really brought up by my mom to look for a bargain (I grew up POOR!). So while that really expensive doll may appeal more to someone, that ain't me. All I can think about is "Geeze $600 and they don't even sand the seams".

Now if the doll was bigger, better sculpted, included more stuff, etc. then I'm back to loving it again. XD But I guess what I'm saying is that that mentality on price is very influenced by a person's background.

 

When it comes to dolls, I'm not really one to get the ones that are expensive.
I'd much rather go by the looks of the doll. If its pretty, I want it.
And chances are, the one I want looks better than the expensive ones.

 

I don't look so much at the price as I look at the joints. If the joints look poorly constructed then I am less likely to buy the doll no matter how much I like the face.
If the price is very high though, but it is a doll I really want, I will get it eventually but it gets bumped down the list until I feel the time is right to save up for that particular doll (Ryoya I am looking at you).

 

I think at times people look at the price and buy just because they are expensive, or a limited edition. I have bought cheaper dolls, but they did not work out for me. This is NOT because they were cheaper, but because I did not like the aesthetic. I base me decision on whether or not I like most things about the doll, and though this is usually a more expensive doll, I would not just put off buying a cheaper doll because of the price.

 

If bjds were cheap, I do suspect I wouldn't bother with them at all. I have no love for cheap(er) bjds at all. Somehow, yea, it does seem that they're not as special if you could just pick up a few at one go...