I think that, in any business, we give respect to those that have a personal enthusiasm, involvement, knowledge, ethics and pure pleasure in what they do. Ideally, purchasing should be a pleasure, and so should after-sales experience.
About forty years ago, when I was doing my student holiday job in a shop, and reading books from the book section at quiet times, I read my first and last book on management and sales. There were two thing in it that stuck in my mind for ever:
--- Looking after your boss is wrong; you should be looking after your staff. If your boss is a good manager he should be looking after you.
and, more pertinent to our present conversation,
--- a sale is made when the customer comes back for another one.
Have to say, that in my working life, I met very few bosses who would have thought number-one right, but I feel that, in the retail trade, number-two is coming to prominence. India, however, is yet to experience real growth of consumer power. For instance, how ridiculous is it, that if I buy a dvd drive that turns out to be dud, the shop is not interested, I have to spend my time taking it to the manufacturer's agent, who then repair it and, after some time return it to me. Un-ridiculous is that I take it back to the shop and get a new one there and then. The shop returns it to their distributor for credit. I happily go back to that shop next time I buy. It's not, as they say, rocket science, and it is not even a great work or financial exposure for the dealer.
We want to have friendliness and humanity in all our dealings, because that is what makes the world go round, but dealers (of whatever commodity) must recognise that the buck stops with them. The customer is not responsible for the up-line relationships and pricing, and, even if the dealer can't do anything about it, they are at the sharp end when it comes to facing the customer. Tough.
Now, in the UK, a customer will walk into the shop with an internet page, maybe 30% discount, and the shop must match that price if they want to sell it all. There's a downside to all this too, of course, which is that the customer spends an afternoon in a dealer's demo room, taking his time, drinking the guy's tea, and then buys off the net. We need to compromise and be responsible customers too: those demo facilities, property, stock and staff, as has been pointed out, do not come free.
As to international price differences, the dealer must listen and take it up with his suppliers. The one area that none of us can do anything about is import duty and sales tax, but, hey, India is not alone in those, even if rates differ. If I remember rightly, the current VAT rate in UK is 17.5% --- a quite considerable chunk going to the government. Yes, this is good for travellers, who can reclaim at least some of it at the airport on the way home.
Another "As to"... end-of-line, last-year's-model, ex-demo units... In my mother country, expect up to 30%, even 50% off. There is absolutely no way that a British shopper will pay full price for something that has sat on a shelf for a year gathering dust (excepting an up-to-date unit that may have been unboxed and displayed for a short time, on which a nominal discount might be negotiated).
Case: both my amplifier (Cyrus IIIi) and speakers (Castle) came from a specialist London hifi dealer, not a box-shifter. Both were ex-demo; the speakers had some barely noticeable cosmetic damage. I think there was 50% off the speakers, and almost that much off the amp.
The dealers may not welcome all this, and some may not survive it, but, like it or not, this is the culture that is lapping at India's shores. What's more it is tenable. Whilst Richer Sounds shifts vast quantities every day (but hey, guess what: many of their branches have demo rooms and knowledgeable staff too!), smaller specialist dealers selling much more exotic, high-end stuff, still exist there too. Some of the medium-size businesses manage to straddle both, with several branches and internet sales.
As in the Chinese saying, we live in interesting times. Perhaps some dealers might find them a bit too interesting!