In comparison to other developed countries, pretty much everything is cheaper in the U.S.: cars, electronics, furniture, restaurant food, you name it. Bigger ticket items with significant importation like cars, furniture, and watches are generally cheaper in the U.S. than *any* country, developed or otherwise.
This fact continues to amaze me when I travel. For example, a car in Thailand, regardless of make or luxuriousness, costs double what it would cost in the U.S. (this is before taxes). This is from a Toyota Corolla on up to a Ferrari.
My belief is that this effect is due to a number of factors. The first is comparatively generous import taxes. Other countries tend to have measurably higher tariffs for imported goods. I went to the IWC boutique in Bangkok and chatted with one of the sales people there for quite some time. I was able to establish that the price that the Bangkok AD paid on a big ingenieur was actually greater than the U.S. list price on the same model. My guess is that import fees had a lot to do with this.
The second, and much larger, effect is the existence of a very large middle class in the U.S. that is both affluent and value-centric. A person making median income in the U.S. has substantially more buying power than a median earner in almost any other country (certainly any larger one)...therefore they are comparatively affluent. Because of the highly fluid class structure in the U.S., Americans also tend to be more motivated by price, or the perception of value, than other countries where class identity has a greater impact on purchasing decisions (I'm just talking on average, here...we can find plenty of exceptions to this trend on this forum!). In other words, the U.S. a decrease in price means an increase in sales volume, even for expensive things like cars and watches. In other countries, a decrease in price of a luxury item will still not cause a middle class person to buy it because it may still cost more than they can afford (less affluent) and/or they may not be interested in it at any price ("I'm not the kind of person who buys an expensive thing like X"). And even if the brand does entice middle class people to buy it because of a price decrease, there may simply not be large enough middle class to make this effect worthwhile. The U.S. just happens to have all the conditions necessary to reward price decreases with increased sales even for many luxury goods.
A good example here is BMW. A BMW 3-series costs less in the U.S. than they do in any other country except (possibly) Germany (it might even be cheaper than Germany, but I haven't checked lately). This is because of a decision that BMW made in the late 1990s to more than double their sales volume in the U.S. They did this because lowering the list price of a 3 series to below $30k had an enormous effect on their sales volume. Volkswagon had already been doing this for years. In other countries, you have people who buy BMWs and people who don't, and neither population is influenced that much by price.
Just my opinion, but as you can tell I have been puzzled by this for awhile.
///M
