Show your costs to boost sales • Hacker News Board

Re: Show your costs to boost sales

#121

Post by renewiltord » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

johnsmith4739 wrote: post #106

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of lazy of you to disclose the Backpack and Chicken Soup cases in a declarative way. You present no references, no drill-down on whether all other effects were equal in these cases. For example, did chicken soup sales continue for an extended period of time and were not driven by other factors such as "a cold going around" or low temperatures? Trust is certainly a factor in consumer behavior, but it nowhere…

Sorry for the downvotes you get, it's appalling. The whole piece is superficial and riddled with inconsistencies. I guess we can take it as entertainment? It's what non-marketers think a growth marketer does, just put in text form. I'm not here to make friends, but if you state that you got 21% increase, you better show the work. In a world where everybody lies, you better have proof.

Honestly, I downvoted because most of the utility in these articles to me isn't the precise number, it's the idea. After all, I don't really care that chocolate bars work this way if I'm selling a SaaS product. I'm going to run the numbers myself.

It's the idea that this could work.

I want to encourage people to honestly communicate ideas to me and I want to discourage people who would discourage those first people.

I explicitly don't want to restrict only the highest-quality research. I want to permit some amount of scamming me.

Re: Show your costs to boost sales

#122

Post by mistersys » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

xgulfie wrote: post #103

ssharp wrote: post #85

I've done substantial amounts of a/b testing and experimentation around ecommerce pricing and it's pretty rare for a maxim like "show your costs to boost sales" to hold to in either 1) the long run or 2) across multiple product types, audience types, brands etc. Especially with something relatively novel like this, results are very prone to bias since novelty has the tendency to increase purchase-intent in the short-…

Yeah, seeing the cost breakdown for luxury goods like this feels totally different than for seeing one for other things, like a bottle of Coke or a handmade good from Etsy.

Yeah I don't think a cost breakdown on my drop ship products on Etsy would increase sales. We roughly double the price vs. cost of goods, but it's not like we're rolling in dough because at our volume fixed expenses take up a really significant amount of our profit.

Re: Show your costs to boost sales

#123

Post by lastofthemojito » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 6:39 PM UTC

There's a very fancy, very expensive hotel in Newfoundland that I was lusting over recently. Anyhow, I saw an "Economic Nutrition" panel on their website, formatted similarly to the familiar Nutrition Facts panel seen on food packaging. They break down the cost of a stay into categories (Labor, Marketing, etc) and by geographic areas that benefit. It's an interesting technique ... although it did not convince me to actually book a stay at the $2000/night hotel.

https://fogoislandinn.ca/your-stay/suites-rates/

Re: Show your costs to boost sales

#124

Post by rmason » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 7:04 PM UTC

We've got a couple of local BBQ place's funded by proceeds from the sale of a local tech company. The founder just posted a video on Facebook yesterday explaining why their popular wings were being taken off the menu.

He breaks down their exact costs, why they're currently selling them at a loss and why they'd have to raise prices 50% to make the dish profitable.

A lot of people were angry when they announced the wings were being taken off the menu. Here's his reply, I thought it was absolutely brilliant marketing.

https://www.facebook.com/Saddlebackbbq/videos/94074725667252...

Re: Show your costs to boost sales

#125

Post by ajkjk » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 7:52 PM UTC

rmason wrote: post #124

We've got a couple of local BBQ place's funded by proceeds from the sale of a local tech company. The founder just posted a video on Facebook yesterday explaining why their popular wings were being taken off the menu. He breaks down their exact costs, why they're currently selling them at a loss and why they'd have to raise prices 50% to make the dish profitable. A lot of people were angry when they announced the win…

want to, uh, just summarize it here?

Re: Show your costs to boost sales

#126

Post by phreeza » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 8:03 PM UTC

yuliyp wrote: post #101

bachmeier wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find using decimals places (like 16.1% and 21.1%) in human experiments pretty irritating. It feels like false precision. Whether you say 21.1%, 21%, or 20%, you still have a single number. You could make an argument that decimal places like 21.147258% add clutter, but without an actual measure of uncertainty, all you're doing is reporting a summary of the data in the sample with different amounts of arbitrary rou…

It's not just a number. It's a string of characters conveying information about a measured value. The way it's specified conveys information about the number of significant figures ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_figures ).

Significant figures are not a universal standard, they are an imperfect way to in-band information about confidence, by sacrificing precision.

Re: Show your costs to boost sales

#127

Post by porb121 » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 8:11 PM UTC

chiefofgxbxl wrote: post #93

cody3222 wrote: post #4

"People said they were 14.2% more likely to buy this chocolate bar when they were shown the version with a cost breakdown." What people say they would do and what they actually do are 2 very different things. The conversion rate of actual behavior needs to be tested for this to mean something useful.

Is there an official name for this sort of effect? I've been looking for something to call this. For example, we've had this effect at work when trying to organize social outings; people say they're interested in some activity X (e.g. hiking, board games, etc.), but then the day of that event comes and nobody shows up. The bar is very low to say you're interested in something, but doing actually takes effort.

expressed vs revealed preference

Re: Show your costs to boost sales

#128

Post by CodeWriter23 » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 8:40 PM UTC

dimitrios1 wrote: post #100

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of lazy of you to disclose the Backpack and Chicken Soup cases in a declarative way. You present no references, no drill-down on whether all other effects were equal in these cases. For example, did chicken soup sales continue for an extended period of time and were not driven by other factors such as "a cold going around" or low temperatures? Trust is certainly a factor in consumer behavior, but it nowhere…

It's also equally lazy for you to demand such an in depth and thorough argument and sources when you can pop into a search browser and do some fact checking yourself. No one owes you anything. This is a discussion board, not a dissertation defense.

I came up in a time where merit meant something. And this summary literally has no merit at all.

Re: Show your costs to boost sales

#129

Post by molszanski » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

devoutsalsa wrote: post #16

londons_explore wrote: post #11

Most "premium" products costs are mostly Advertising, R&D, paying employees/shareholders, etc. They're valid things to spend money on, but don't reflect the "top quality ingredients" that consumers expect the money to be spent on. I suspect many consumers wouldn't like to know that the $1500 iPhone they just bought only has $400 worth of actual parts in.

I'm willing to buy a $1500 phone w/ $400 in parts because it has a better user experience than $150 phone with $50 worth of parts.

Totally agree.

I am too, willing to buy a $300 000 car w/ $100 000 in parts because it has a better user experience than a $30 000 car with $10 000 worth of parts.

Re: Show your costs to boost sales

#130

Post by rmason » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 8:57 PM UTC

ajkjk wrote: post #125

rmason wrote: post #124

We've got a couple of local BBQ place's funded by proceeds from the sale of a local tech company. The founder just posted a video on Facebook yesterday explaining why their popular wings were being taken off the menu. He breaks down their exact costs, why they're currently selling them at a loss and why they'd have to raise prices 50% to make the dish profitable. A lot of people were angry when they announced the win…

want to, uh, just summarize it here?

The video isn't that long ;1. Increase the price of wings 50%

2. Cheapen the ingredients

3. Take it off the menu until the price of ingredients drop

After surveying their customers they found demand would drop drastically if they raised prices. They don't want to cheapen the ingredients because it would hurt their brand so the only real choice was to take them off the menu.