Study of Consumer Behavior in Camera Market
An analysis of the full-frame mirrorless market
The 2018 Canon EOS R--Canon's first entry into the full-frame mirrorless market with the new RF mount system
Source: Canon
Abstract
This paper addresses the role of incompatible complement goods on competition dynamics in the full-frame mirrorless interchangeable lens camera market segment of the consumer camera industry. Interchangeable lenses that only fit a given brand’s mount can result in significant switching costs for photographers. The recent development of the new full-frame mirrorless cameras and corresponding new mounts provides an interesting case study. Photographer camera ownership is summarized using Flickr.com data and finds a lock-in effect with full-frame mirrorless camera users consistent with similar analysis of the DSLR camera market.
This paper also considers the role of the entry into the full-frame mirrorless market segment by two of the current market leaders in the broader camera industry. Technological developments in the camera industry have resulted in shifting industry leadership and industry shake-outs. It is unclear whether the adoption of full-frame mirrorless will go down in history as a landmark development in the camera industry, but the notable entry into the market segment by two broader market leaders provides evidence that the full-frame mirrorless market is the direction where the high-end segment of camera industry is heading.
Coding
For this paper, I coded a series of bespoke Python programs using the Flickr API to pull Exif data from publicly available images on the Flickr platform. Flickr.com is an online photo repository with over 6 billion photographs across 87 million registered users. The goal of the programs was to randomly search the photographs on Flickr for users that were shooting with current full-frame mirrorless cameras. Then using the unique User IDs gathered from that data collection process, proportions of camera usage were generated.
The result was a dataset with over 2M unique observations that was collapsed down into their unique users. Using a logit model, the predicted probabilities of a user staying within a certain brand were calculated.
The result was a dataset with over 2M unique observations that was collapsed down into their unique users. Using a logit model, the predicted probabilities of a user staying within a certain brand were calculated.
Presentation
A presentation of the paper and its findings was performed in May 2019 to Professor John T. Scott and the students of Economics 45. This served as the capstone requirement for the economics major at Dartmouth.