To provide a system with which a great profit can be brought to a company by promoting sales of ink cartridges while giving a user an incentive to consume photographic paper so that the user wants to use more photographic paper.

The printing system comprises a printer mounted with an ink cartridge and a host device capable of communicating with the printer, and the ink cartridge has a prize winning determination means which has a storage medium for recording a prize winning ID for a prize contest and a dot count value and compares the prize winning ID with the dot count value to determine a prize win.