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Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

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Re: Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

#21

Post by tirant »

remedan wrote: post #15

> It is the goal of every business to maximise profits. As a business, it is your responsibility to price your products in a way that will yield the most profit. This is how the article starts, and it might be somewhat off-topic, but I disagree. Plenty of businesses (at least privately held ones) have the goal of simply making enough for the owners to get by. Not to optimize for the absolute maximum. And why should t…

I agree. The objective of every business is to be decided by their owners. That claim is indeed not always valid. That might be the case for basically every publicly traded company but for sure not for many small businesses.

Re: Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

#22

Post by TZubiri »

remedan wrote: post #15

> It is the goal of every business to maximise profits. As a business, it is your responsibility to price your products in a way that will yield the most profit. This is how the article starts, and it might be somewhat off-topic, but I disagree. Plenty of businesses (at least privately held ones) have the goal of simply making enough for the owners to get by. Not to optimize for the absolute maximum. And why should t…

Funnily enough, when incorporating, "to make profit" is usually not part of the stated mission, usually it's something along the lines of "to make chess software"

Re: Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

#23

Post by lesuorac »

briandoll wrote: post #20
remedan wrote: post #15

> It is the goal of every business to maximise profits. As a business, it is your responsibility to price your products in a way that will yield the most profit. This is how the article starts, and it might be somewhat off-topic, but I disagree. Plenty of businesses (at least privately held ones) have the goal of simply making enough for the owners to get by. Not to optimize for the absolute maximum. And why should t…

In short, the leadership team has a fiduciary responsibility to their investors. Privately held lifestyle businesses don't, at least not as much.

But there's no concrete definition of fiduciary!

One can easily argue that by having flat pricing they're doing their fiduciary responsibility because it's setting the company up to succeed in the long run through strong consumer trust.

One can argue that by having regional pricing they're doing their fiduciary responsibility because it's setting the company up to succeed by having success in more markets.

The takeaway from Dodge vs Ford [1] is that not fiduciary duty means dollars at any cost. It's that you need to have a reason that is good for the shareholders. If you don't bother to claim it's good for the shareholders then you're not doing your fiduciary duty.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

Re: Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

#24

Post by BurningFrog »

remedan wrote: post #15

> It is the goal of every business to maximise profits. As a business, it is your responsibility to price your products in a way that will yield the most profit. This is how the article starts, and it might be somewhat off-topic, but I disagree. Plenty of businesses (at least privately held ones) have the goal of simply making enough for the owners to get by. Not to optimize for the absolute maximum. And why should t…

It's not a perfect model of the world, but empirically it's a very useful one, so economists often use it to understand the world.

Re: Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

#25

Post by johndhi »

remedan wrote: post #15

> It is the goal of every business to maximise profits. As a business, it is your responsibility to price your products in a way that will yield the most profit. This is how the article starts, and it might be somewhat off-topic, but I disagree. Plenty of businesses (at least privately held ones) have the goal of simply making enough for the owners to get by. Not to optimize for the absolute maximum. And why should t…

surely it's the goal of most pricing strategies, though, right?

Re: Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

#26

Post by Y_Y »

teiferer wrote: post #9
Y_Y wrote: post #6

Chess.com is a scam anyway. Rather than comparing the price of Norwegian Chess.cok to Nigerian Chess.con you should be comparing to lichess.org. They have a better app and plenty of people to play with, without any paywalling or marketing or rent-seeking.

> Chess.com is a scam anyway Is it? How so? Just because you like an alternative better doesn't make it a scam. Sure they are turning a profit. But when you pay, you get more features. You don't need to pay if you don't want those features or want them somewhere else. And they use some money to sponsor events. Titled Tuesday is a staple in the worldwide chess community and most top players play there. Not really yo m…

[flagged]

Re: Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

#27

Post by grzaks »

Y_Y wrote: post #6

Chess.com is a scam anyway. Rather than comparing the price of Norwegian Chess.cok to Nigerian Chess.con you should be comparing to lichess.org. They have a better app and plenty of people to play with, without any paywalling or marketing or rent-seeking.

I was a Platinum subscriber for a few years. It's definitely not a scam, but in my opinion, they completely fail at detecting cheaters.

It's very frustrating when you lose a lot of games to cheaters. I cancelled my subscription and moved to Lichess — and although I still lose games, I don't feel like I'm being cheated nearly as often as on Chess.com.

Re: Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

#28

Post by andoando »

emptybits wrote: post #17
remedan wrote: post #15

> It is the goal of every business to maximise profits. As a business, it is your responsibility to price your products in a way that will yield the most profit. This is how the article starts, and it might be somewhat off-topic, but I disagree. Plenty of businesses (at least privately held ones) have the goal of simply making enough for the owners to get by. Not to optimize for the absolute maximum. And why should t…

Agreed. Related: the widely held belief that a corporation's singular goal is to maximize shareholder value.

It might not be the case legally, but it is the sole metric that stockholders value.

Re: Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

#29

Post by haunter »

Steam used to have (until 2016) a two tier regonal pricing in the EU (EU1 and EU2) but they had to stop it because it was discrimination that people in Sweden paid more for a game than people in Bulgaria. Now everyone in the EU pays the same as people in Sweden. And of course games haven't become cheaper either

Re: Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

#30

Post by realityfactchex »

remedan wrote: post #15

> It is the goal of every business to maximise profits. As a business, it is your responsibility to price your products in a way that will yield the most profit. This is how the article starts, and it might be somewhat off-topic, but I disagree. Plenty of businesses (at least privately held ones) have the goal of simply making enough for the owners to get by. Not to optimize for the absolute maximum. And why should t…

Yeah, it's a myth, and a pervasive one. Decent description at [0].

Not only that, but people actually think they know that.

Since people believe it, it's "real to them".

IMO, this helps make it easier to go from "we're going to make the best widgets and be good, responsible, ethical corps" to "we will extract as much value as possible from customers, anything within the law is fair game, external consequences not being our concern".

[0] https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-co...

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