BNet, which is heavily focused on sales, has a couple helpful posts on pricing. Three Successful Pricing Strategies for a Downturn urges you to react quickly when necessary, but don’t hurt the long term to save the short term, and … Read More
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Fixing Mistakes in Your Pricing Structure: 2 Examples
You analyze reams of data. You carefully evaluate potential pricing policies. You select what you think is the best one. And then your users tell you that they hate it. And not just because no one likes to spend money … Read More
When Buying Larger Quantities is a Worse Deal
When you buy in bulk, you typically get a better deal. On a per-unit basis, it’s cheaper to buy a 32-pack of Coca Cola at Costco than a single can in a convenience store. The same concept applies in industrial … Read More
Differentiating Commodities
Pricing power comes from differential value. If you offer more value, you can charge more. Value is perceived by the customer, however, so while you can suggest the value of your offering, the customer ultimately decides. Often, attributes that some … Read More
PPS Spring Conference
We’re at the Professional Pricing Society Spring Conference, with over 500 other pricing folks. The best comment I’ve heard so far came from someone who stopped by our booth this morning. He had spent 9 years in sales and recently … Read More
Luxury Pricing: Top This!
Although I’ve said before that with luxury items, the price is the value, I’m still occasionally astounded. Now along comes one of the most absurd items I’ve ever seen. Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome created a watch they call “Night & … Read More
Not Free! Why $0.00 Is Not the Future of Business
Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson recently wrote a provocatively-titled article called Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business. Anderson argues that the economics of computing on the net, where storage and bandwidth costs fall even faster than the cost of … Read More
Pricing Advice from the World’s Oldest Profession
For many people watching the Elliot Spitzer scandal unfold, the shocking part of the story was not that a powerful politician went to a prostitute. That seems almost retro these days. What seemed jaw-dropping was the amount of money Spitzer … Read More
Microsoft Acquires Pricing Firm Rapt
Software giant Microsoft (MSFT) purchased pricing optimization software firm Rapt to help make up ground against industry leader Google. Rapt got its start trying to optimize prices for computer makers such as Sun and HP. Rapt had some good success … Read More
More Customer Segmentation
Following up on an earlier post, here’s another method of helping customers segment themselves. (Thanks to TripTouch.) Gives new meaning to “capitalism.” While we don’t recommend this kind of segmentation, we do like the notion of letting customers self-select into … Read More