Why not give products the same model number world wide?

Garbz · May 20, 2008

You ask an Australian if the camera they are shooting with is a Digital Rebel and they think you're going to photoshop a mohawk on every portrait. Ran into the problem on this forum today. Someone had no idea what a Canon 450D is.

Why do companies even bother? Toshiba do this with TVs too. They give them different model numbers even though they have equivalent products in Europe and America.

Why call the 350D the XT, the 400D the Rebel XTi, and the 450D XSi. Heck I'm not even sure I just got that right!

Overread · May 20, 2008

Price fixing I think is a big contributer.
Its harder for the layman to find out about a fixed price which is lower in another country if the product has a different name and model number.

Rhys · May 20, 2008

Also different standards. A TV made for the US is not the same as one made for the UK because they use different broadcast systems. Similarly Asia has yet another system.

astrostu · May 20, 2008

I was going to say what Overread did ... who am I kidding? I'll still say it:

I think a lot of it has to do with price. It's harder to compare prices, and it's easier to "justify" a different price if there's a different model number. Like DVDs - you have region encoding so you can charge one price in Asia, another in Europe, and another in the US.

Case in-point was when I was searching for my KitchenAid mixer for my birthday (my parents footing the bill). I went to the local Costco and wrote down the model number to see if I was getting a good deal. Lo and behold, I couldn't find that model anywhere. I finally found a mention of it on the KitchenAid forums. Turns out that it's exclusive to Costco and Sam's Club, where the first 5 digits/letters were the model, the 6th indicated what accessories it came with, and then 1 or 2 letters indicating the color. So I couldn't compare prices directly anywhere because it was a physically different model, with just a slightly different motor wattage.

christopher walrath · May 20, 2008

That would make my sr-T101 an sr-T3and31/32 (fractional as opposed to metric).

Garbz · May 21, 2008

Yes but this works just fine for companies which don't change models too. Like Apple, Dell, Sony, Microsoft. I guess it may be slightly difference since all these mentioned companies have a distribution channel that would prevent international selling. Pitty because the AUD/USD is at 0.94US a record high which makes camera lenses from B&H an absolute bargain even after freight and tax.

Rhys I doubt that's it. If it were my TV wouldn't come with an NTSC tuner in it (we use PAL in Australia) and it would have asked me which country I was in when I first set it up.

Actually I haven't seen a TV or mobile phone which didn't work internationally in ages, but I guess the multiple DVB standards must be causing some hassles because I hear the stories come from europe about which DVB box to get.

Samriel · May 22, 2008

Garbz said:
Why call the 350D the XT, the 400D the Rebel XTi, and the 450D XSi. Heck I'm not even sure I just got that right!

To make it even worse, the XT and the XTi (I think) are not called 350D or 400D in Japan, they are called the EOS Kiss Digital X and EOS Kiss X2. :banghead:

Maybe the targed group is different, or just the marketing culture. Japanese love cuteness in their marketing above anything else, and "Kiss" might seem just the perfect name to sell an entry level camera. In the US people seem to like liberty and freedom above all, and "Rebel" just reeks of cool individualism, liberty and James Dean. In the rest of the world people maybe just like to focus more on the contents and functions then on the "cool" names (or serious financial problems have thought them to do so).

Of course, this does not explain why my EPSON PM900 inkjet printer is called RX7000 or something outside of Japan...

KD5NRH · May 22, 2008

Samriel said:
Maybe the targed group is different, or just the marketing culture.

Yeah, I've kinda wondered about that one...does "Maxxum" mean something in Japanese that "Dynax" doesn't, or vice versa?

Samriel · May 22, 2008

I'm not native in Japanese, but my Japanese is good enough to write minor research papers, and I'm quite sure that neither "Maxxum" nor "Dynax" means anything... maybe it's supposed to sound "cool"? It can often be that the original name is just not acceptable abroad. Many Japanese cars have names which are not acceptable in other languages - there was a car, I think a Nissan, which is called Platz here. In German it means "place" OR it can mean "sit doggy" (or literally "take place"). I don't know any Italian, but I've heard that quite a few of these car names are in Italian, but nobody would buy it in Italy with that name. To the Japanese they just sound cool.

Check www.engrish.com for weird English in Japan and other Far-East countries.

Garbz · May 22, 2008

Yes the classic case of the Mitsubishi Pajero which means ****er in spanish I believe.

But surely there's nothing obnoxious or unmarketable about "450D" In fact I think it's far less confusing. 450D newer than 350D, but what's the difference between XTi or XSi :madmad:

Socrates · May 23, 2008

Garbz said:
You ask an Australian if the camera they are shooting with is a Digital Rebel and they think you're going to photoshop a mohawk on every portrait. Ran into the problem on this forum today. Someone had no idea what a Canon 450D is.

Why do companies even bother? Toshiba do this with TVs too. They give them different model numbers even though they have equivalent products in Europe and America.

Why call the 350D the XT, the 400D the Rebel XTi, and the 450D XSi. Heck I'm not even sure I just got that right!

My car is a Honda Fit in the U.S. but a Honda Jazz elsewhere in the world. The irony is that "jazz" is uniquely American.

AndrewG · May 23, 2008

Samriel said:
To make it even worse, the XT and the XTi (I think) are not called 350D or 400D in Japan, they are called the EOS Kiss Digital X and EOS Kiss X2. :banghead:

Maybe the targed group is different, or just the marketing culture. Japanese love cuteness in their marketing above anything else, and "Kiss" might seem just the perfect name to sell an entry level camera. In the US people seem to like liberty and freedom above all, and "Rebel" just reeks of cool individualism, liberty and James Dean. In the rest of the world people maybe just like to focus more on the contents and functions then on the "cool" names (or serious financial problems have thought them to do so).

Of course, this does not explain why my EPSON PM900 inkjet printer is called RX7000 or something outside of Japan...

You got it in one; companies spend fortunes in researching demographics in different sales environments to find out which product designation is likely to be most acceptable.

astrostu · May 23, 2008

Oh, I just thought of another reason: Sometimes, the name that's used in most of the world is a very poor choice where you happen to be marketing. For example, the Chevy Nova. In Spanish, "No va" means (effective) "Doesn't Go." So you really wouldn't want to market a car with the name "doesn't go." This is of course vs. Volvo, which in Spanish is effectively "I Go."

Joves · May 23, 2008

I remeber a friend of mine told me that in Italy that Sega was slang for ****ing so, they didnt use that name there. I about busted my gut laughing at that. So is Canon the only one with this diffrence in cameras or, does Nikon do it as well? It sounds more like a manufacturers choice to me.