Help me out here: counter-depth fridges have less evailable space, but appear to cost significantly more. Today at the store there were two near-identical high-end fridges, and the counter-depth model was $200 more.
Am I missing something here? Are they just charging more cause it’s different or something?
Could it be possible they are using different and more compact parts to help offset the reduced size of the smaller fridge, and the larger one uses different things that may be bigger but cheaper?
That’s the only thing I thought of, but then they’re not THAT much smaller. Who knows, maybe that’s it.
I think a large element of this is “because they can”. The folks who are buying cabinet-depth refrigerators are actually getting something of a discount compared to built-in refrigerators, which cost hundreds or thousands more. But they’re still paying more for what is basically a styling statement. People are willing to pay more for the stylish effect of cabinet-depth, so the appliance makers charge more.
Possibly the lesser volume of sales for these models?
This could be a large part of it. If they sell 200,000 normal sized fridges and 2,000 counter depth fridges I can totally see why the non-standard version would cost more. Their economy of scale is shot so it could legitimately cost them more to make the non-standard version. And even if it didn’t, they still may be in a position to charge more: if you don’t want to pay the premium you can always buy their cheaper normal sized fridge, so they may not lose too much sales with the higher price.