Yup. Very little profit is made on the "main" items like your TVs, computers, cameras, etc. (NOTE: Not true for appliances, as these aren't sold with accessories.) It's just like a car dealer; they try to throw in "extras" at ridiculously high margins, hoping you won't notice because you're getting such a great deal on the big-ticket item. "Since you're spending $2000 on this TV, you want to get the best quality picture on it, right? You want to get these $100 cables then." And of course people buy them, because what's an extra 5% of the total bill to "make the most of their investment"? It was bad enough when signal strength sort of mattered with analog signals, but with HDMI, it's irrelevant.
Yes, they do track the percentage of items that go out the door with attached accessories. They also track the number of customers who walk out the door without buying something. Retail chains have "scorecards" for absolutely everything, and you can bet that the employees know where they stand and what their "goals" are.
Meh, I'm going to stop before I write 6 pages on scorecards. :)
