Blog
We often tell our clients they should pay more attention to how their customers behave rather than what the customers say. We don’t mean to imply that clients should ignore customer feedback; but customers do not always act the way they say they will. For example, they will often say price is the most important […]
I was recently discussing the labor market with the CEO of an industrial services company. He said they were having difficulty attracting enough qualified employees, and that was limiting their ability to grow. When I asked why he didn’t just offer more attractive pay packages, he said it would be counter-productive. There is a limited […]
Last week I ordered tickets to a spring training baseball game, and it was another demonstration of the power of multi-part pricing. By that I mean the amount the customer ultimately pays includes multiple components, and they add up to more than the headline amount. When we experience multi-part pricing, i.e., pay the extras, we […]
I read an article in the Wall Street Journal Friday, New Worry for CEOs: Rising Costs From Metals to Meat, that discussed recent increases in inflation. Curiously, the article subtitle was Companies could be forced to raise prices or eat the additional expense. I think they have it wrong. Companies should look at this as […]
A couple years ago I wrote a post, The Myth of the Rational Consumer, in which I discussed evidence that customers really don’t want to change products or providers. I expanded on those views in a subsequent post The Myth of the Rational Consumer – Take 2. Much of the evidence I offered related to […]
We are occasionally asked by clients or prospective clients to help them simplify their pricing. These requests are usually the result of the company struggling to manage the myriad prices they offer, but also often include a desire to make it easier to engage customers, or a desire to improve the margins on the lowest […]
Many of us make New Year’s resolutions with great intentions, but perhaps miss carrying out some of them. Even if you made great progress this year, we hope you will join us in making and sticking to these resolutions. This is our fifth annual publishing of New Year’s Resolutions for Pricing
I am constantly reminded that customers don’t always behave the way the say they will, or the way we think they will. Earlier this month I read an article in the New York Times, Why Trying New Things Is So Hard to Do. Then over the weekend I read Dan Ariely’s column Ask Ariely, […]
Donald Trump likes to call any reporting critical to him or his presidency Fake News. While that is a thin-skinned reaction to the stories, the President often has a legitimate point that the reporting was written in a style designed to get a specific reaction. Somewhat similarly, we often see pricing strategies anchored on very […]
