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The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

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Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#201

Post by krustyburger »

marktangotango wrote: post #199
WalterBright wrote: post #55

Pricing things can be strange. Back in the old Zortech days, we included full library source for free with the compiler. Library source wasn't even available for other compilers. Nobody particularly cared that we did that, and it was never mentioned in compiler reviews in the press. One day, Borland decided to package partial (not including floating point) library source for their compiler as a separate product. The…

A looong time ago I worked at a comic book store and the owner had a table of freebies at the front of the store. The distributors were always sending marketing material with cool artwork, so instead of throwing it in the trash when it piled up, he figured why not give it away? No one touched it. Then he started packaging it into $5 “grab bags”. That crap was gone in a week. The lesson? “You can’t give shit away, but…

Not being able to see the contents, customers probably assumed there was something more valuable in there than promotional items. I doubt many of them bought more than one grab bag.

I think Diamond (the distributor) frowns on stores selling items that were meant to be given away for free. To be honest, the owner doesn’t sound like the most reputable guy.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#203

Post by willart4food »

> "Imagine, for Thanksgiving, you go to your parents' for dinner and after a nice dinner they say, 'That's going to be $10 per person,' " Simonsohn says. "You would be upset."

LOL, my first ex-wife's mother would charge $40/person for hosting the mandatory Thanksgiving dinner, after people also contributed in the way of co-ordinated sides, fixings, beverages.

By the way, $40/person in the 90's.

And no she was not poor, and nobody in the family was flush with cash.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#204

Post by adrianmonk »

socketnaut wrote: post #25
save_ferris wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ive been saying for years that airlines should do this. Add the price of an alcoholic beverage to everyone's ticket and then give those who want one a "free" drink. I never understood why they opted to go with ruthless cuts and declining customer experience.

Because most people search fares online and book the cheapest ticket.

Do they? I certainly don't behave that way. Fares are definitely something I factor in heavily, but a $10 difference isn't something I consider significant.

Long before that point, I start looking at other factors like departure and arrival times and whether I like the airline.

For example, I just did a quick search, and for $25 more total round trip, I can get nonstop flights both ways. I didn't specify nonstop as a search filter (since there are few nonstop flights between these two cities), but now that I know it's only $25 more, I'd pick that.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#205

Post by refurb »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #117

This is a good cautionary tale and one I've seen played out in the tech industry with food. Even in the 80's it wasn't uncommon for a tech company to have a "beer bust" on Friday's where drinks and snacks were served as a social gathering for employees at the end of the work week. It was a turning point in employee relations when the VP of HR at Sun cancelled the weekly beer bust. Similarly at Google when they decide…

I immediately thought of company perks as another good example of this.

I can remember when my company was trying to spend less, so they took away an employee perk. Now this employee perk was kind of ridiculous (no other company paid for it) and it wasn't that popular (a few people used it).

However, when they took it away? Holy crap were people pissed.

This is one of the big lessons for me early in my career. Before you do something, ask yourself if you're prepared to do it forever. Sometimes it doesn't matter, but sometimes it does and you'll be better off if you never do it in the first place versus doing it and then taking it away.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#206

Post by 1123581321 »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #49
dperfect wrote: post #26

It's true - charging for something that was once free can be risky, but it isn't always bad as some might believe. I have great respect for businesses that charge for a service that provides real value - even if it was once free. Often times (especially in the startup world), companies start out offering a free product (operating at a loss) to gain market share. It's not often the best strategy, but in some markets i…

A similar thing happens in the podcasting space. It's a pity it's still quite inconvenient to make micropayments. If I could make a single click to pay a penny for access to a single article, I imagine I'd do so frequently.

You would need to pay quite a bit more to make this viable for most publications. The ballpark formula is the issue price divided by the number of articles the average reader wants to read enough to pay anything. For example, a WSJ is $4, so if readers wanted to read ten articles, they should charge 40-50 cents for them.

A more realistic price might be $1-2/article since the median reader won’t be that interested. Pricing schemes that increase the total reading cost on a log curve can be imagined.

Of course we dream of a micropayments system fluid enough that people start consuming 10-100x the content so the price per piece can go down accordingly, but that is unlikely since there isn’t that much free time. A first mover might accumulate a lot of new readers, but that would eventually even out.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#207

Post by alharith »

karaterobot wrote: post #69

I didn't know about the Red Cross and its donuts. The example I've always used for this is helping a friend move. If the friend asks "hey, will you help me move? I'm buying pizza and beer afterwards!" I will more than likely say yes, even though I can buy my own pizza and beer. If they instead say "hey, will you help me move? I'll pay you $21.58 for your time," I'd probably bristle. Even though that might be the equi…

You are not just saying yes to 21.58, you are saying yes to the satisfaction of helping a friend and the reward of receiving their appreciation in the form of their chosen gift back to you: pizza and beer, plus the time shared enjoying that pizza and beer together.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#208

Post by Jommi »

freeone3000 wrote: post #123
Jommi wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Currently air travel is a completely homogeneous service. There is basically no difference from one company to the other, so it makes no sense not to go with the cheapest Where are you getting this? Tons of airlines provide varying levels of service/amenities. Only thing that is homogeneous is that you get from A to B. I think you are onto something there, but you should have phrased it another way. E.g. I think air…

Getting from A to B is the most important service an airline provides. The seats are always cramped, so the degree doesn't matter terribly. Even on their website, I can't search by "flight has power outlets". Nor is the wifi speed available, or even consistent. Maybe the problem is that airlines don't have a value prop relative to each other at all.

It might well be, but we can't be sure, because just like you said that info is not available in an easily comparable form.

It's gonna be interesting to see the growth of new airlines now that COVID is a thing.

Low prices seem to be a given, but customers are expecting service that accommodates their new fears related to air flight.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#210

Post by traes »

boulos wrote: post #136
karaterobot wrote: post #69

I didn't know about the Red Cross and its donuts. The example I've always used for this is helping a friend move. If the friend asks "hey, will you help me move? I'm buying pizza and beer afterwards!" I will more than likely say yes, even though I can buy my own pizza and beer. If they instead say "hey, will you help me move? I'll pay you $21.58 for your time," I'd probably bristle. Even though that might be the equi…

In behavioral economics that’s sometimes referred to as “social norms versus market norms” [first useful link, 1]. The example given (I think it’s via Ariely) is that you wouldn’t pay your friend to have cooked you dinner. This is the same thing: there’s social contract value in helping your friend out, and they’re showing appreciation with a token . In fact, if you friend offers you more money than the pizza and bee…

I mean, the pizza and beer offer also presumably includes spending time hanging out with your friend, the value of which cannot be equated with money.
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