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…
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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
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
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
Common Pricing Question: If I discount, can I make it up in volume?
A lot of promotions, rebates, coupons, and other discounts offer the promise of “making it up in volume.” But how reliable is this promise? In many markets, particularly those with high price elasticity (no, not every market has high elasticity), … Read More
Automated Price Protection
Many stores offer 30 day price protection. If you buy something and the store lowers the price within 30 days, they’ll refund the difference. The hard part was knowing when they had lowered the price. An alert reader sent a … Read More
The Blog Post that May Cost Dell Millions
No, not this post you’re reading here. This post, over at Joel on Software, which thousands of techies read. Joel complains about the way Dell’s site forces users to select which segment they belong to (Home, Education, Small Business, etc). … Read More