Show your costs to boost sales • Hacker News Board

Re: Show your costs to boost sales

#131

Post by marcinzm » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 9:03 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.

>No one owes you anything.

and no one owes the author page views or their time either.

>This is a discussion board

Exactly, we're having a discussion on what the article is missing and why it matters.

Re: Show your costs to boost sales

#132

Post by throwawayboise » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

rmason wrote: post #130

ajkjk wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's another choice, they could opt to continue selling the wings at a loss, if that created goodwill or especially if it promoted the sale of other profitable items (e.g. drinks, other side items). This is called a "loss leader" and is a common marketing play seen in supermarkets.

Re: Show your costs to boost sales

#133

Post by moneywoes » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

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-…

What do you find works best

Re: Show your costs to boost sales

#134

Post by undefined1 » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 9:53 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…

great find. it might've been worth increasing the price though, to see if customers still bought them or not in practice. with a note on the table or menu explaining why the price increased.

Re: Show your costs to boost sales

#135

Post by schnable » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 11:11 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.

Text form, with emojis!

Re: Show your costs to boost sales

#136

Post by boomboomsubban » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 1:52 AM UTC

vntok wrote: post #65

lupire wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are confusing confidence intervals (used to say that you are confident the increase is positive at all) with error margin (the false precision in the 3rd significant figure).

That does not bode well for the rest of the methodology...

Mixing up terms in casual conversation happens to everyone, and is not a sign of a meaningful problem.

Re: Show your costs to boost sales

#137

Post by Geee » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 2:22 AM UTC

tyrex2017 wrote: post #33

omg, brace for BS marketers start putting fake cost numbers on their products to boost sales..

Yes, and you can include everything in 'labor'. Like the cost of labor of the BS marketer.

Re: Show your costs to boost sales

#138

Post by tanaros » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 2:37 AM 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…

It's a nice video, but I don't really understand the formula.

They make the claim that they need to price products assuming 30% goes to food / ingredients, 30% goes to labor, 20% goes to fixed costs, and the remaining 20% is kept as profit. Thus, the increase in wing cost means they have to increase the price from $14 to $22.

However, the labor and fixed costs don't increase just because the ingredient cost increased. They list the new price of wings as $6.56. Assuming the $14 price was based on the formula, this is an increase of $2.36. They could keep the wings on the menu for $16.50 and make the same amount of profit as before.

Re: Show your costs to boost sales

#139

Post by Causality1 » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 3:10 AM UTC

Seems pretty logical. Most companies try to screw their customers as hard as possible. When you're shown proof one of them isn't doing that, you're much more open to doing business with them.

Re: Show your costs to boost sales

#140

Post by Mengkudulangsat » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 3:12 AM 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…

This is amazing!

Not about the chicken-wing issue per se... but the fact that a local small business has the wherewithal to make a corporate presentation on facebook for their community to judge.

That's really sweet.