PriceSCAN Press Release
6/3/09
12 Megapixel Digital Camera Index Shows Remarkable Stability in First 150 Days
PriceSCAN Vice President of Financial Products Daniel Fehder commented that, “The 12 megapixel Digital Camera Index has shown strong overall stability when compared with the 8 megapixel Camera at a similar time in its lifecycle. Both Indices represented the state of the art in point-and-shoot cameras in their first 150 days, but the 12 megapixel index ended those 150 days 19 points above the 8 megapixel Index, representing a 19% higher price level.”
Jeff Trester, PriceSCAN Co-CEO and Chief Economist, noted, “It may be that the retail market is anticipating slower, less dramatic innovation now then in the comparable period in the early days of 8 megapixel cameras, thus allowing 12 megapixel models to maintain more robust pricing. Another factor may be that, in the context of a weak economy, 12 megapixel cameras have been released with lower initial retail margins then those of the 8 megapixel introduction period, effectively building in some early discounting immediately rather than spreading the decline over a period of months, as in the earlier case. Yet the support of any price level requires some underlying demand, so perhaps this early strength in a latest-generation consumer technology’s pricing is giving us a higher-resolution picture of a small but intriguingly green shoot.”
About The PriceSCAN Manufactured Product Indices
The PriceSCAN Manufactured Product Indices are a set of 50 indices tracking a broad array of finished good prices at the retail level. The PriceSCAN indices are carried on Bloomberg's data service under the ticker symbol PRIC and are available on PriceSCAN.com’s website at http://www.pricescan.com/indices. PriceSCAN.com also makes available customized data packages for clients in the financial, technology and retail communities.
About the PriceSCAN.com Econometric Team
Dr. Jeffrey J. Trester is Co-CEO and Chief Economist of PriceSCAN. After graduating MIT and attending Yale for graduate studies in theoretical physics, Dr. Trester received his PhD in financial economics from the Wharton School. He has also served on the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank’s Business Council. Daniel C. Fehder is Vice President of Financial Products at PriceSCAN.com. A graduate of Harvard and University of Pennsylvania, he can be reached for comment at analytics {at} pricescan.com
About PriceSCAN.com, Inc
Founded in 1997, PriceSCAN.com is a comprehensive price and product comparison service. Millions of consumers a year have used PriceSCAN.com to bargain hunt. In addition to price comparison, PriceSCAN.com offers objective vendor ratings, a price focused technology blog, user reviews, price trend graphs, and email price target alerts.
