in030186, Francois Coallier's Comments on the ANSI Comments on the JTC 1 MTPT e-commerce Market Trial (in030066)

in030186

January 31, 2003

To:	Bob Feghali; Chabot; Apel Holger; Claude Merle; Favre Christian; Fleury Nicolas; Gerundino Daniele; Helberling Gisela; Howard Paul; Jan Jelinek; John Hill; Karen Higginbottom; Kari Kaartama; Keith Moyes; Motonobu Kuroda; Lisa Rajchel; Magne Kalstad; Alberto Monteverdi; Ann Nel; Rick Parsons; Susan Chong; Reinhold Welina; Jonathan Buck
Subject:	Francois Coallier's Comments on the ANSI Comments on the JTC 1 MTPT e-commerce Market Trial (in030066)
From:	François Coallier

Dear all,

My apologies for such a late reply on this.

Looking at ANSI's data the following conclusions can be drawn:

Standards that are either at the end of their life-cycle (obsolete) or have limited market potential will not sell more, even if we cut their price.
Standards that have good market potential will sell significantly more at a lower price, to the point were revenues from sales will be higher at the lower pricing. For 1539-3, the results were a 900% increase in circulation and a 377% increase in revenues

It is quite difficult to draw further conclusions from this study, principally because of the way we came to the sample that we used: an arbitrary set of standards that included many new standards. But it does seems that overall, lower pricing does increase unit sales.

Whatever decision is taken need to reconcile the following objectives:

To optimize the number of standards that are sold (and used): this is the objective of all the volunteers (and their sponsors) that work to develop these standards.
Protect the revenues of standards organizations

A greater flexibility in pricing would definitively help to achieve these objectives.

Regards,

François Coallier

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François Coallier
Professeur / Professor
Département de génie électrique / Department of Electrical Engineering
École de technologie supérieure
1100, rue Notre-Dame Ouest
Montréal, Québec
Canada H3C 1K3
Tel. +1 514 396 8637
Fax. +1 514 396 8684
fcoallier@ele.etsmtl.ca

Président/Chairman
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC7 - Software and Systems Engineering
chair@jtc1-sc7.org
www.jtc1-sc7.org