retail pricing

Will Amazon Offer Kindle for Free?

Farhad Manjoo had a provocative piece at Slate, predicting that Amazon will soon start giving away Kindle readers. Fellow pricing geek, Rags Srinivasan and I got into a Twitter discussion, with Rags claiming that Manjoo was way off base. Rags … Read More

Restaurant Pricing– Food for Thought

(Guest post by Peter Maniscalo.) My wife and I recently visited one of our favorite local restaurants (a “Bar & Grill” as it’s called).  We’ve been loyal customers for several years.  It’s a nice place, always busy with good food, service, atmosphere … Read More

Amazon Enters the Tablet War for Real, and at $199

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 … Read More

Selling a Commodity for a Premium Price

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 … Read More

Price Increase through Reverse Volume Discount

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 … Read More

To Groupon or Not to Groupon?

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 … Read More

Real vs. Perceived Value

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 … Read More

The hidden story from Apple’s WWDC

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 … Read More

What’s worse than inflation?

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. … Read More

The team’s a winner– so the prices are going up

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 … Read More