HP is very insistent that users of its printers don't turn to cheaper third-party alternatives for their ink cartridges. It introduced a feature called Dynamic Security in...
When I buy a jar of peanut butter, if I have a good experience eating it I’m going to buy that brand again. “Investing” in your customers is business speak for making sure your customers have a good experience.
The disconnect here is HP doesn’t seem themselves as being in the “printer” business. They see themselves as being in the ink/paper/repairs business… and they advertise their printers as costing 8.6 cents per page. If you’re happy to pay that much, then I’d argue HP probably is a good choice.
Personally I use a basic Brother laser printer, with cheap paper and cheap toner it comes in at around 1 cent per page. When I need higher quality, I get it printed by a professional printer - those cost quite a bit more than HP’s pricing but I don’t do it often and it’s much higher quality than any (affordable) HP printer.
You say that like it’s a bad thing?
When I buy a jar of peanut butter, if I have a good experience eating it I’m going to buy that brand again. “Investing” in your customers is business speak for making sure your customers have a good experience.
The disconnect here is HP doesn’t seem themselves as being in the “printer” business. They see themselves as being in the ink/paper/repairs business… and they advertise their printers as costing 8.6 cents per page. If you’re happy to pay that much, then I’d argue HP probably is a good choice.
Personally I use a basic Brother laser printer, with cheap paper and cheap toner it comes in at around 1 cent per page. When I need higher quality, I get it printed by a professional printer - those cost quite a bit more than HP’s pricing but I don’t do it often and it’s much higher quality than any (affordable) HP printer.
Investing in customers is not necessarily the same as customers being investments.
I would argue that HP made bad investments in their customers and their customers not being bad investments.