Think about it logically. The company wouldn't release this new product with the intention of making a loss. They can only increase profit (that's the whole principle of business, right?) by increasing sales or reducing expenses. It would appear in this case they are aiming to do both. The cost of a single 3.2L PET bottle would cost less in raw materials compared to 9 x 345ml glass bottles with 9 x bottle caps. So the reduction in labour and materials already presents a substantial cost saving in itself.
You're always gonna have the loyal blokes who grab the same slab of new or xxxx or vb whatever but in the event that one weekend Joe Blow buys his usual carton plus a bottle of this new shit, then the marketing behind the product has already worked by making you buy the product. I'm sure i'm not the only bloke who's gone to the bottleshop, seen something new on the shelf and bought it (pre-homebrew days of course!!!). So the marketing behind it seems to be around the whole 'draught' experience and the convenience of having 1 bottle to dispose of afterwards cause fucken hell i've seen enough of the mess created 'the morning after' a big night on the piss and you now have 100 bottles to throw out.
As for the 10m outlay..... think of Apple as an example. You might pay $600 for an iPad or whatever the fucken things are worth when in fact it only costs them $70 worth of materials and labour etc to make it. But the staggering fact that almost everyone overlooks is the research and development aspect, technological patents/copyrights, wages, marketing, overheads such as rent,
machinery costs, insurance and depreciation etc etc which can all be attributed and traced back to the cost of the product and indeed go towards determining a selling point for the product.
Only reason i chimed in here is because i'm an accounting student and inbetween making beer, i have to bury my head in friggen uni books that cover this exact same stuff so i thought i'd try and help explain how that $10m and $22 is calculated.
cheers
Josh
