Talk:Cash cow

Another example

 * Another good example of cash cows are the SUVs produced by GM and Ford and lasting up until the gas price hikes of 2005. Surprise!
 * --jwalling 02:53, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Hybrid vehicle assertion
Can anyone support the assertion that Hybrid Vehicles are an expample of a cash cow for any automotive company? It seems as though Hybrids are kind of opposites of cash cows: they get good publicity but don't (unfortunately) represent a large % of any company's profits. - BenC.


 * The articles doesn't say that, nor does the above comment... 208.81.43.46 (talk) 22:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Cash cows
I heard that a more profitable cash cow is seen as a "larger" cash cow, and that the adjectives "large" "larger" "Largest" (E.G america's largest cash cow) can be used to describe the profitablity of cash cows. Is this true? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 124.197.50.143 (talk) 12:52, 14 May 2007 (UTC).

Fair use rationale for Image:Pyat rublei 1997.jpg
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BetacommandBot 11:23, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Ranting
The first example says 35-40% profit is typical in the storage market - A good example of this phrase. It was followed by this:

"An example of a product cash cow is Blizzard's hugely successful World of Warcraft. Released in 2004 this massively multiplayer online role playing game has a combined worldwide subscriber base of 8.5 million players. Using US dollars to estimate a total the average monthly charge is US$12. This adds up to US$102 million gross every month. This monetary sum doesn't account for product and merchandise sales based on World of Warcraft (e.g. t-shirts, soundtrack albums, key chains, mouse pads, novels, trade card game, toys, and the like)."

Okay, you did some multiplication - you haven't proven that Blizzard makes enormous net profits.

They probably do! But this isn't evidence, and is instead an annoying nerd rant that doesn't belong on Wikipedia. There's no problem with using Blizzard as an example, but estimating their gross profits doesn't prove the point in the same way that the example before it did.

If this stays, it invites everyone to use this page to whine about the oil companies or college book prices or literally anything else that seems more expensive than it should be. Companies exist to make money, and prices are set according to demand. People will still pay for WoW, will still buy gas, and will still buy storage units.


 * The costs of providing server infrastructure and customer support for MMORPGs are large and well substantiated. By that measure World of Warcraft would not be considered a cash cow because although it is a profitable enterprise, the cost to sustain it is very high. In order for it to be a cash cow, the cost to sustain it would have to be low. 208.81.43.46 (talk) 22:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Does the cash cow necessarily have large profit margins?
Don't some models depict it as being something with a low profit margin but high volume, e.g. a grocery store? Tisane (talk) 06:33, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Origins
The usage of "Cash Cow" appears to have come from Peter Drucker. It's possible that he passed it along as an anecdote about British soldiers in India, but even that doesn't really make all that much sense, why buy a cow for a temple? Instead, the term "milch cow", which dates to 1601, which has the same exact contextual meaning as "cash cow" is the likely source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.11.171.7 (talk) 20:54, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Webkinz
Can we mention the Webkinz game Cash Cow? Flygon's friend- Smarter than the average bear! 20:27, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Really bad article
Very few citations and poorly written. --173.13.177.204 (talk) 00:58, 3 April 2013 (UTC)