Reminds me of a trade-show where we exhibited a new product about ten years ago. The product in question was designed from the ground-up for the real-time processing of very high resolution images. This entailed custom FPGA boards with gobs of custom and innovative Verilog code to make it all go. We also took pride in designing a very nice lightweight aluminum enclosure for the product. Price was about US $8,000. All up, about a year and a half of development time and a non-trivial financial investment.

The product was introduced at this trade-show and it was a success. However, of the hundreds of people I spoke to at the booth only one made a lasting impression that I remember ten years later. This Italian buyer comes over to get a demo. After a 20 minute presentation he asks for the price. Then he picks-up the unit and says: "8000 dollars! Why so light!".

He actually thought we were charging too much based on how light the thing was. Never mind that there was a year and a half of heavy-duty development behind it. He had a mental image of what an $8,000 product was supposed to weigh and that was the end of it.

We switched to heavier steel enclosures (cheaper too!). I couldn't count the number of times I heard people make comments about the weight corresponding in some way to the price of the product.