A few suggestions and thoughts.
It is not what you like, or I like, it is what somebody else wants or desires that is important.
That said, people's needs and desires are limited by their pocket books, but their desires can also be created by the seller.
So, where does that leave us?
Compile a prospective price chart.
Start with a preamp from a specific company. Add a matching amp. And speakers, DVD player, accessories etc and determine a selling price for that system.
For this exercise, published retail prices are the most useful.
Then do the same with every other component in your prospective product lines. Do the same exercise with a receiver rather than separate components.
When you get done, you have a range of prices for prospective customers. A broad range of prices is useful for attracting a variety of prospective customers.
What I suspect you will find is that you have lumped together some good equipment that surprisingly have a comparative range of prices.
Do you have a system, receiver, dvd and complete 5.1 speaker system with floor standing front speakers that will go out the door for under $1000? How about $2000? How many prospective packages at that price? How about $3000 (again how many prospective packages at that price). How about $10,000? How about $30,000?
Now add video to the equation.
Bottom line, the larger range of price packages that you can offer, the great number of customers you can potentially attract.
Many customers desiring to spend $30K on their system will only spend $5. Conversely, many customers desiring to spend $1K on their system will spend A LOT more.
Your job is to offer something that appeals to their price desires, and sell them the equipment that they actually need to meet the their needs.
In the trade, there is something that is called "up selling". If you can upsell every prospective $1K customers into $8K customers, you will be infinitely more successful as there are many, many more prospective $1K customers to attract than there are potential $8K customers to attract.
Offering an entry level system, or systems, allows you to attract more prospective customers, thus the greater chance to upsell those customers into better equipment.
I have reviewed the product offerings from many dedicated audio showrooms. The surprising thing is most, if not all, have (what they obviously consider) entry level equipment. Just some "common" equipment, be it an entry level Yamaha, Denon, HK etc Receiver, an inexpensive DVD player, and a basic 5.1 speaker system to complete the package for the budget restricted consumer. Their entry system may not sell for less than $1K, but their entry level systems always sell for less than 10% of their most expensive systems.
One showroom owner (friend) told me (years ago) that he seldom sold his entry level systems to new customers... His prices were not competitive enough with CC etc, but it was those entry level systems that attracted the greatest number of his new customers. Customers, by the way, that spent an average of $3 to $12K (20 years ago) instead of the $500 entry system that they had sought.
By the way, his wife was a realtor. She joked that she sold houses to attract the real customers (her last big sale that I know of, was a small tract of land that sold for $3.9 million).
Got the idea? Entry level to attract the big customers.
