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Do not talk about pricing

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Re: Do not talk about pricing

#81

Post by LoSboccacc »

majewsky wrote: post #73
newjersey wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't see myself as a game buyer at all. So, for me the $5 I paid for skyrim or however much I didn't on other several games I bought is money I wouldn't have spent. Now the $10 I spent on limbo of different. I didn't wait for a sale. I just bought it. I think steam optimized the revenue from me pretty well. And it all started with them giving me portal (one) for free.

> And it all started with them giving me portal (one) for free. Heh, same for me. I was quite surprised when my library recently hit the 100 games mark.

far from a hoarder here, and I'm at 300+

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197986674427

but I don't play more than 10 probably XD

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#82

Post by arethuza »

creshal wrote: post #75
lmm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting x tonnes into geosynchronous orbit is about as fungible as it gets. There wouldn't necessarily be any custom work at all (in practice there's integration work but if you're using a standard satellite bus that can be pretty standard).

That's already more known unknowns than most software vendors have. 95% really boils down to "x licenses of package y, options z and w, additional support at n dollars/hour", which you can put on your website just fine. The "sales teams" are often glorified speech-to-text lackeys that just feed your numbers to an excel sheet, read back the result and then make you believe you're getting special treatment. It's differ…

The costs for ERP, large CRM and similar projects are often implementation costs (in the widest sense of implementation - not just "developing stuff"). The licensing costs are significant but can be a small percentage of the overall costs.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#83

Post by J_Darnley »

desdiv wrote: post #30
nitwit005 wrote: post #27

If you try to buy things, it's sometimes desperately frustrating that no one will just quote you a simple price. They have different pricing tiers, and want a salesperson to talk to you so they can pretend to give you a "special" discount, and all sorts of BS. I'm sure these things work, but they also alienate customers sometimes. People have founded entire businesses on offering clearer pricing schemes.

It's a funny world when Elon Musk will openly display "$90M to send 6.4mT of your shit into geosynchronous orbit"[0] and yet millions of businesses selling things that are far less expensive and far more fungible want you to "contact our sales team for a quote". [0] http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities

> mT

Is that millitonnes, more commonly known as kilograms?

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#84

Post by petermacrobert »

nitwit005 wrote: post #27

If you try to buy things, it's sometimes desperately frustrating that no one will just quote you a simple price. They have different pricing tiers, and want a salesperson to talk to you so they can pretend to give you a "special" discount, and all sorts of BS. I'm sure these things work, but they also alienate customers sometimes. People have founded entire businesses on offering clearer pricing schemes.

Tom Whitwell's post isn't arguing for obfuscated pricing. His argument is that pricing is subjective, and the actual number itself is largely irrelevant from the perspective of an individual consumer. Pricing can still be clearly defined and emotional at the same time. This is the basis of the psychology of price anchoring.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#85

Post by coldtea »

corysama wrote: post #48
lucaspiller wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the same and it doesn't really make any sense. Ok food is physical and tasty, but you enjoy it for maybe 15 minutes vs a game that could provide 100s of hours of entertainment?

The difference is uncertainty. With pizza, you know pretty well what you are going to get. With an app, 90% are crap, 9% are ok but not what you personally prefer, 1% are great. So, gambling $2 with a seemingly 1% chance of greatness feels like an app costs $200. The reality is not that bad. But, it's all about how it feels. On top of that, it's not even really about the money. You don't want to feel bad about gettin…

>The difference is uncertainty. With pizza, you know pretty well what you are going to get.

Two counter-arguments:

People buy enticing stuff off of supermarket shelves all the time though -- things that they are not certain if they'll like them.

Lots of people who have bought and generally like an app (or so they say), still complain for its price on boards, even if it's comparable to a beer. E.g. they ask why a $2.99 app isn't $0.99 etc.

So it's not just "uncertainty".

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#86

Post by majewsky »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #81
majewsky wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And it all started with them giving me portal (one) for free. Heh, same for me. I was quite surprised when my library recently hit the 100 games mark.

far from a hoarder here, and I'm at 300+ http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197986674427 but I don't play more than 10 probably XD

Heh. The only game that I currently play in Steam is not even a Steam game, but PCSX2 (a PS2 emulator); I only need Steam for the Steam Controller.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#87

Post by xenophonf »

J_Darnley wrote: post #83
desdiv wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a funny world when Elon Musk will openly display "$90M to send 6.4mT of your shit into geosynchronous orbit"[0] and yet millions of businesses selling things that are far less expensive and far more fungible want you to "contact our sales team for a quote". [0] http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities

> mT Is that millitonnes, more commonly known as kilograms?

I think that means metric tons, which gives a much more reasonable payload size of 6400 kg.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#88

Post by shawnee_ »

At The Times, we realised that converting customers who paid £8/week for the printed newspaper into customers paying £2/week for the digital edition (often after paying Apple £500 for an iPad on which to read the edition) wasn’t great business. ... So — over two years — we gradually raised the price for those original customers to £6/week.

The problem with "do not talk about pricing" is that you're assuming your customers are idiots. There's nothing wrong with having a bunch of profitable idiots as customers, but that's not quite the target audience for a product like newspapers. The simple fact is that the cost of delivering volume to subscribers (one more subscriber) is so teeny tiny small that inflating the price more than a reasonable amount (when in fact you're losing advertising eyeballs) is what's not smart business. Companies that presume I'm an idiot don't get my business.

You cannot talk about pricing without talking about cost. Intelligent businesses are unafraid to be transparent with their variable costs (which for a digital-only newspaper are significantly less than for a print version); what trips prices is the bulky overhead fixed costs: CEO and executive management pay, benefits, and unnecessarily swanky office space.

Realtors are probably the best example of this IRL, operating in an industry that "doesn't want you to talk about pricing" (e.g. negotiated commission at an hourly rate, for example) ... just sign on the dotted line and let them abscond with all your equity in a lump sum payment.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#89

Post by brajesh »

J_Darnley wrote: post #83
desdiv wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a funny world when Elon Musk will openly display "$90M to send 6.4mT of your shit into geosynchronous orbit"[0] and yet millions of businesses selling things that are far less expensive and far more fungible want you to "contact our sales team for a quote". [0] http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities

> mT Is that millitonnes, more commonly known as kilograms?

metric ton (1000 kg)

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#90

Post by pc86 »

boulos wrote: post #25
clarkmoody wrote: post #12

The phenomenon is called anchoring[1], and it works like this: the first price we see anchors our thinking about additional information. This is why furniture stores have a perpetual sale. "Oh look, this $2500 sofa is only $1899.99 right now. What a great deal!" One experiment had respondents use the last two digits of their social security number as the initial price for a bottle of wine or other good. This complete…

Predictably irrational by Dan Ariely has a good number of case studies that I think illuminate the topic particularly well: http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded-Decisions/dp/0061353248 Unsurprisingly there's some sort of combo deal to get Thinking Fast and Slow with it.

If you remove the spaces before that link it will be clickable.
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