It has long been the case that companies selling products, such as GE, make no money on the products themselves, but on financing or service (once the products are installed.) This can, of course, work in reverse: I learned last week that IBM, allegedly, sells outsourcing services without profit but make their money on product sales to their (in practice, captive) service customers.
This is a conundrum to me, for I learned in the late 90s that the falling transaction costs caused by vastly increases communications and coordination capability would lower factor prices and make cross-subsidization more difficult. Of course, our ability to construct and maintain complex pricing schemes would increase as well, but still – are these cross-subsidizing schemes clever bookkeeping, intentionally complicated pricing to confuse customers and competitors, or simply the result of historical developments, where companies structures haven’t yet caught up with economics realities?