Back to my original statement of costing more. I don't accept being charged more simply because the market can bear it where I reside as a justifiable reason why I should pay more for the same product.
The statement being that the cost factor is higher when shipping is brought into the equation in Hawaii, not why or why not it's justifiable based on "country pricing and markets". Actual costs vs price marketing.
But like I said, there are many factors that determine pricing. It's easy to pick on shipping costs because it's an obvious factor but others are not so obvious.
Done with this. You simply make broad statements with little merit and seemingly attempt to justify country pricing. Your mystical other factors somehow lower the price of the Corolla and negate thousands spent in trucking, rail and shipping.
The other factors are hardly mythical - but they are tougher to quantify. Just a few off the top of my head:
- Economies of scale
- Marketing costs
- Exchange rates (current and projected)
- Regulatory compliance
I'm not saying that these and others offset the shipping costs, because I obviously don't know the details. But they are certainly factored into the price of the vehicle on both sides of the border. So to me, comparing prices
strictly on the cost of shipping and freight as you are doing doesn't tell the whole story.
And we haven't even talked about the exchange rate. At the time that this article was published, the Canadian dollar was around $0.95 USD. So the Corolla was actually
cheaper in Canada.
Of course, this situation isn't unique to cars. A case of Moosehead beer brewed in NB is half the price across the border in Maine. And for some reason gas that comes from the Irving refinery in Saint John is often cheaper at gas stations in Fredericton than it is in Saint John.
