Date post: | 20-Aug-2015 |
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PRICING LESSONS EVERYWHERE Chris Lema @chrislema http://chrislema.com
IN A STORE • In 2009, Cornell found the $ lowered spending. • The Dollar Bin section & Dollar Store sell for more. • Buy 1 get 1 free pushes the “bargain” button. • Limit 2 per customer anchors us on 2. • Old/Sale price listings anchor & push bargain button • Easier math on old/sale delta feels like bigger savings • Smaller font = smaller price (Clark University)
@chrislema
IN RESTAURANT • Stars, Plowhorses, Puzzlers, Dogs – on every menu • First items in section are most profitable. • Hard to find often means unprofitable dish. • Drawing a box around it drives sales. • Packaging / MealDeals work. • Free appetizers protect you from “all you can eat
@chrislema
IN AN ENTERPRISE • Yammer - $5/month • Xobni - $29/once • DropBox - Free • Amazon Web Services – $.89/month
The idea is that you can price it for consumers, get several in a single company to buy it, and then make it a no-brainer for the enterprise license (which is much more expensive).
@chrislema
IN ECOMMERCE • Items too close in price drop sales (Yale, 2012) • Explicit comparisons slow purchasing (Stanford) • A comma can make things worse (Clark Uni, 2011) • There’s no discernable drop in sales pre-price bump. • You can A/B test everything - Amazon. (Optimizely) • More competition can drive price higher for
premium products by 40% (LBS)
@chrislema
IN VIDEO GAMES • Valve runs Steam, the iTunes of video games • Continuously running pricing experiments • Initially found perfect price elasticity • Then did a huge 75% sale with promotions. • Saw a 40x increase in gross revenue. • Assumed temporal shifting. • Then saw in store sales increase + post-sale increase.
“Our audience [buyers] were more effective than promotions.” @chrislema
IN CLASSIFIEDS • Check out Significant Objects online • Rob Walker & Joshua Glenn, 2009 • 100 items were purchased for $1.25 (average) • All the items were sold on eBay, total of $3,600.
• The narrative adds value.
@chrislema
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM ALL OF THIS? Chris Lema @chrislema http://chrislema.com
ALWAYS TEST • Every single experiment, and every single result, is a matter of
context: – The buyer’s context – The market’s context – The product’s context
• Don’t copy someone’s move. Copy their motivation.
• Valve’s initial test suggested perfect elasticity. If they’d stopped testing, they would have missed out.
• Always test! @chrislema
NEVER JUST $$ • People choose to buy or not buy a
product, but the price represents more than just money.
• It’s about Value, Time, Energy & Savings
@chrislema
ANCHORS WORK • “The best place to sell a $3,000 watch is
next to a $15,000 one.”
• With cars it’s the MSRP.
• Arbitrary Coherence Social Security Number Experiment (http://danariely.com/the-books/excerpted-from-chapter-1-%E2%80%93-the-truth-about-relativity/)
@chrislema
NOT RATIONAL • You make emotional decisions and
then justify them with your own form of “logic”
• You’re wildly biased and easily influenced
@chrislema
BEST BET? USE VALUE TO PRICE INSTEAD Chris Lema @chrislema http://chrislema.com
RAISE PRICES? • If you anchor higher prices, then
you’re really “coming down” for special cases, not “raising them” for others.
• Think about movie tickets in the afternoon >> Discount.
@chrislema
VALUE IS… • In the eye of the beholder. • This means you need to spend time
learning how they see the world. • Don’t price in a vacuum.
@chrislema
VALUE TAKES… • Tons of work. • “Marinate in the problem space.” • This isn’t as fast or easy and looking
left and right. But it’s worth it.
@chrislema
GET HELP!
Chris Lema @chrislema http://chrislema.com CTO & Chief Strategist Crowd Favorite