As expected, Amazon this week launched a new media tablet, the Kindle Fire, at a $199 price point. This immediately started the debate about whether the Kindle Fire was an iPad killer. Indeed, this debate overshadowed the overhaul of the entire Kindle line up, which now starts at just $79. These devices are less portable [...]
How can you charge more for a commodity? Here’s one of my favorite examples. 24 ounces of ketchup at $0.07/oz. Turn that idea on its head. 32 ounces at $0.079/oz. The price per unit goes up almost 13%. Not bad for a commodity. Note that the different sizes make it harder for buyers to know [...]
It’s no secret that companies often change package sizes to mask or soften price increases. Coca Cola is going one step further, touting it’s 16oz bottles as “more for your buck” at $0.99. Want more soda? You can pony up $1.29 for 20oz, a 30% price increase for a 25% volume increase. Coke is happy [...]
Groupon has taken the local deal market by storm, growing quickly to $2B in revenue (depending on how you define “revenue”). The local deals company has also created massive buzz and is now preparing for one of the largest IPOs in history. As a “pricing person”, I get a lot of questions from small business [...]
If your maximum price is determined by the perceived differential value of your offering, how do you know what value customers perceive. Many of them won’t tell you, especially if they think you’ll use that information to jack up the price. Here’s an example of a product that for many buyers has a really high [...]
Unless you’ve been assiduously avoiding the news lately, you probably heard that Apple announced a new iPhone model yesterday at their World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), along with updated laptops and various software updates. Most of the news coverage focused on these items, but the real story was buried. For the first time in years, [...]
When commodity prices surged and governments around the world pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into markets, crippling inflation was a major risk. However, demand is so soft that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) fell a record 1.0% in October. With the critical holiday buying season coming up, a lot of retailers aren’t even pretending [...]
Sports Illustrated reports that the AL Champion Tampa Bay Rays are raising ticket prices $1-$5 next year, following their first winning season. Tickets for most games will cost $10-$210, although some games against popular competition will cost more. Nothing succeeds like success, and although I haven’t even made it out to the Dell Diamond to [...]
Generally, per-unit prices go down as volumes go up. This is not always the case, however. Occasionally, whether by accident or as a tax on the mathematically disinclined, you’ll see something like this:(From The Consumerist, which includes another, even more egregious example in one of the comments.)
We’ve had other discussions about how for some luxury goods, the exorbitant price is part of the value (see $300,000 watches that only tell you whether it’s day or night). Meanwhile, as some of you may have heard, Apple launched a new iPhone, along with the AppStore, which allows iPhone owners to install applications, much [...]
