A shrink for your pricing?

The other day I started a book by Peter Jenkins called “A walk across America”. It is about Jenkins who, as a young disillusioned man, in a post-Vietnam, post-Woodstock era, sought to find himself during a coast-to-coast soul-searching walk together with his dog.

It is an old book, first published in 1979.

Jenkins does not just take off; he prepares meticulously, he exercises, he talks to other people with experience from ultra long walks, and he carefully plans the equipment he will need to carry as he walks from upstate N.Y. to California. It is with his preparation where this story connects with pricing. Jenkins, with very limited funds, says that he selected one brand of tent, backpack, sleeping bag and so forth, because “There were more expensive companies, but this was the best I could afford”.

Thus, what Jenkins demonstrated was one of the cornerstones of value pricing and pricing psychology. He believed that the price of the goods he needed was directly correlated to the “bestness”; in his case the comfort, quality, durability and weight of the product. The higher the price, the more “bestness”.

While in many cases there are correlations between price and “bestness”, this correlation is not certain, linear nor exact. It could well have been that a different brand, 15% less costly had a better “bestness”, that a brand, at the same price, or maybe 10% higher was twice as good, or half as good. In fact, the book explains how Jenkins made the brand decisions primarily from reading catalogues. He based his value perceptions solely on the marketing messages of the various brands. Thus, he selected a brand based on its messages and his derived perception of its value The basis of his choice was the perception of “bestness” these messages inferred, rather then the actual “bestness” of the product. In the end, however, the products met his expectation, he was a happy customer, and we cannot know the true facts on how these products really would stack up.

Another example of the psychology of pricing, this time from Atenga’s case files, is this company that came up with a new and innovative nail-gun. The nail-gun could be used by DIY homeowners and professionals; construction workers. The company had initially priced the product at $172; it was a price taken out of thin air, but the management team all felt was “the right price”. In fact, it was higher then the assumed price used in their financial plans, so their business plan numbers looked better then everybody had hoped. The product is a true innovation and does not have serious competition, and the company had a good PR agent. So they were rather well publicized in newspapers and magazines for both DYI folks and professionals. Yet, the business was just not going anywhere.

Just as the example of the camping equipment, where Jenkins believed (as do most of us most of the time) that he price of a product is a good indicator of its quality, its “bestness”, so did the customers of the nail-gun. There are ways in which price specific market research accurately can assess the optimum price for a set number of attributes, a set quality, a set “bestness.” In this case, research showed that professionals said that the price of the device was much too low. They said that it was “too cheap – can’t be any good.” Thus, the price of $172 was to them a message of inferior quality. In fact, research showed that any price less than $205, would indicate to a majority of prospective professional customers that the product must have inferior quality and not be worth buying. This same research showed that at $288, the product would be too expensive, and the benefits it provided would not be worth the price. The optimum price for this product was $242. At that price, the majority of prospective buyers said that the product met their payment expectations, and the business took off; it generated a 40% increase in sales volume in only two months.

So what do we learn here? Well, we learn that the price of your product or your service is also part of your marketing mix, just as communicative and just as important as your marketing messages, and your positioning statements. Your pricing must all be congruent and relevant for the marketplace you have selected. In the case with the nail-gun, the marketing messages of the company built a value and expectation of price that the $172 price completely disrupted, also disrupting the buying process, and left the company struggling.

But this also means that you can affect the marketplace’ perception of value, perception of “bestness” and therefore their willingness to pay - many times without changing the product! The better you understand the psychology behind your customers’ purchasing decisions the better you can influence the perception of value your marketing message builds, the better you can increase the congruency in the marketing mix and the better your company will perform. Many companies, unfortunately, forget that price is part of your customer communication; it can communicate value, "bestness", or the lack thereof. The choice is yours. You need to, and you can, take control of price as part of your marketing mix. You need to understand the psychology of pricing for your company, your product or service, and for your marketplace. Be the pricing shrink! Enjoy!

With warm summer regards,

Per Sjofors

Founder, Managing Partner

Atenga Inc

www.atenga.com