Good Posts on Pricing Segmentation

There’s a good series of posts on pricing segmentation in the retail sector over at B2B Blog. See Part 1 of 4 Part 2 of 4 Part 3 of 4 Part 4 coming later…

Airlines Try New Pricing Moves

With high fixed costs and perishable products, airlines have long been the poster child for “yield management”, “revenue management”, and other sophisticated statistical methods for optimizing profit. Or minimizing losses. While travel is up, airlines are still looking for ways … Read More

Barker to Retire from “The Price Is Right”

Some light news for a Friday afternoon: TV show host Bob Barker will retire from “The Price is Right” after 35 years.

Nominal Price Rigidity

Slate had an interesting article on this topic, pondering why it took Coca-Cola 70 years to raise their prices from a nickel to a dime. One problem– they had created perpetual contracts with distributors, somehow not anticipating inflation. (The price … Read More

Hopefully Not the Case at Your Company

Many companies treat their pricing people poorly, which seems short-sighted when you consider the impact they have on the bottom line. Hopefully no one has a story that can top this.

Aiming the pricing dagger at a competitor’s heart

Last fall, Wal-Mart cut the price on a Panasonic 42-inch flat screen TV below $1000. Pushing through this “magic” price-point set of a wave of price drops across the electronics retailing industry, destroying a lot of the profits in a … Read More

Abusive Pricing?

Jason Calconis has a funny post about a hotel charging $2.80 for a cup of coffee. I’m not sure how much you get to complain about coffee when you have a $400 hotel room, but the point is legit. People … Read More

Selling Price Protection on Airline Tickets

Quasi-stealth mode startup Yapta is offering a new wrinkle on airline tickets. First, travel sites like Expedia gave buyers unprecedented visibility and power by allowing them to conveniently buy airline tickets from multiple carriers. Then sites like Farecast offered predictions … Read More

Why Starbucks Coffee Is Cheap

Starbucks gets a lot of attention in the pricing world for their ability to charge $4+ for coffee. There are good reasons they can do this (selling something physically addictive doesn’t hurt), but that’s a different post. This post is … Read More

Local Variation in Prices Irks Walgreens Shopper

A Walgreens shopper was shocked to learn that different stores charged different prices for the same item. Ketha Vinson was looking for Motrin in Cincinnati. When one Walgreens was out, she went to a different store, to find the same … Read More