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Do not talk about pricing

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Re: Do not talk about pricing

#111

Post by maxxxxx »

lucaspiller wrote: post #31
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.

They do alienate customers, and for a lot of companies this is on purpose. Try finding a price for one of Oracle's or IBM's enterprise products on their website - you won't - their products aren't designed for the casual browser, they are designed for directors who have budgets in the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars range (where strangely the price ends up pretty similar to the budget). This is the type…

With Oracle and IBM you often can't even figure out what the damn thing does. I have had several occasions where senior management told me to check out that really cool technology they saw. I went to the website and tried to find out what it does and couldn't figure it out.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#112

Post by ryanSrich »

rorykoehler wrote: post #47
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.

Pretty much every company that doesn't display pricing doesn't get my business. There is invariably a competitor that does display pricing and I'll have bought that before the sales rep gets back to me. My philosophy/hunch is that reducing friction equals providing value. I always aim to provide value at every link in the value chain and reducing friction (displaying clear pricing and minimal click instant signup) is…

In the consumer space I 100% agree. Having worked in enterprise though the "no pricing" scheme is par for the course. You don't see SAP prominently displaying their prices online, and for good reason.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#113

Post by tomswartz07 »

lisivka wrote: post #94
xenophonf wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It cannot be metric ton, because "mT" is not a SI unit.

It's metric ton, as in one thousand kilograms.

That's to illustrate the difference between an imperial ton, which is 2000 lbs (or ~907kg).

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#115

Post by increment_i »

labster wrote: post #55
increment_i wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible that you now (like most consumers) have been conditioned to expect apps to be free? Meanwhile, nobody expects anyone to give them a pizza or a beer for free.

I guess you've never gone to university then, because those places don't function without free pizza. It is the only reliable way to get students (and postdocs) to attend your event. (Yes, I'm aware that attendance is the "price" for the pizza, but let's just say that cold pizza can still be had for free.)

While that's an interesting edge case, what I probably should have said is that pizza and beer is something adults expect to exchange money for, as opposed to apps.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#116

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#117

Post by endymi0n »

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.

This.

With years of experience from dealing with "ask for quote" businesses, this strategy is by now an immediate k.o. criteria for me when considering anything.

I may return for your offer only after spending considerable time of not finding any more transparent business (quite rare, but possible for very customized products like renting glass fiber for an office).

In practice this never happens and I've been a much happier customer ever since - with my business life cleaned up from 95% of dealing with crappy sales reps.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#118

Post by fasteddie »

exolymph wrote: post #29
orangecat wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if it's not overdone (as in, customer expecting continual discounts) I'm still surprised that Steam has so many discounts; they've basically trained me to never pay full price. But I feel no need to play new games right when they're released; maybe there are enough people that do.

Delivering games has minimal marginal cost to Steam. So they're not giving anything up by offering discounts.

They are -- the opportunity cost of more revenue. Just because you have low marginal costs doesn't mean you should train your userbase to expect discounts.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#119

Post by CaptSpify »

josephjrobison wrote: post #2

The most surprising thing I learned from this is that even juxtaposing two options will help you get higher pricing. When thinking of product and service pricing, for me it's difficult to invent three different options sometimes, so it's relieving to know that I could create just two and it will get me most of the way there. It is also crazy to think how relational it all is. I don't really need that extra $7 beer at…

I think this is modern tech poking it's holes in our economic model. I know that it costs $some_amount_of_money to make a batch of beer. But there's only so much of it. Sure someone can make another batch, but that costs another $some_amount_of_money.

It also costs $some_amount_of_money to make digital media, yet once created, it can be duplicated indefinitely for free.

At least, that's what always hangs out in the back of my mind.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#120

Post by drzaiusapelord »

lucaspiller wrote: post #31
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.

They do alienate customers, and for a lot of companies this is on purpose. Try finding a price for one of Oracle's or IBM's enterprise products on their website - you won't - their products aren't designed for the casual browser, they are designed for directors who have budgets in the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars range (where strangely the price ends up pretty similar to the budget). This is the type…

> It's not worth it for them to target the small fish

Actually they do target the small fish, that's why they won't publish prices. The idea here is that $big_co may pay $5m for $software, but $small_co will get the near equivalent for $100,000. $big_co doesn't want to feel it got ripped off, so secretive pricing all around.

Also, this pricing allows for a lot of negotiation, volume pricing, and "we'll beat the competition" tactics. Now the competition needs to also engage in secretive pricing to stay competitive.

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