July 25, 2005

And of course with easy payment terms...

Just saw this quote from The Sun magazine (wonderful monthly writing, ideas, essays):

"The only reason a great many American families don't own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments." - Mad magazine

How true this is. Just goes to show you how important it is to get entry offers that lower barriers for people to make the initial purchase decision.

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May 20, 2005

Openness as Strength - the New Progressive Campaign

Doing a price promotion campaign by showing that the other guy has a lower price? Is this crazy or is it really smart?

Just saw this new campaign for auto insurance from Progressive recently. They call the campaign "Think" (watch the clips on their site here). In it they highlight a unique feature of their online insurance quotes - that it will show their price as well as that of their competitors. They also highlight that sometimes they aren't the best price - openly showing the "scorecards."

The approach very much recognizes that in the world of the internet and of Pricegrabber you can find just about any info you want. The Economist had a great survey in March - about how the consumer has become king - where they highlighted this trend:

• "the ability to get information about whatever you want, whenever you want, has given shoppers unprecedented strength"
• "If Dell changes prices on its website, its customers' buying patterns change literally within a minute. That tells you people are well-researched and knowledgeable," says Mike George, Dell's chief marketing officer
• "Over 80% of Ford's customers in America have already researched their prospective purchase on the internet before they arrive at a showroom, and most of them come with a specification sheet showing the precise car they want from the dealer's stock, together with the price they are prepared to pay"
• "more than three-quarters of mobile-phone buyers in America do their research on the web"

Rather than fighting this process Progressive's campaign instead embraces it and in essense says "Bring it on." We're not afraid, we'll make the process easier for you (with the call to action of "Quote, Compare & Buy", we'll be honest and open, we might not always win but "You be the Judge."

They end up positioning themselves as more trustworthy by making themselves vulnerable and trust is obviously a key factor in insurance. Not sure how sustainable this is as differentiation but it sure seems more compelling than a Gecko.

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April 07, 2005

Expectations

Comments for: Sony fails to sell 1 million PSPs in first week - ja.zz. This is a classic case of missetting expectations.

Nintendo allocated 550K machines and sold 500K of them so they were doing this at Christmas. Sony launches and sells 600-700K but says they are going to do 1M. Who looks dumb?

Anyway, now the DS looks like a runaway and Sony is "struggling" despite selling more. There were other issues, but the big one is that if you set low expectations and beat them then you are the winner. Caveat Emptor.

Posted by rich at 10:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 13, 2005

Pricing as promotion.

Thinking about going to the blog business summit in seattle. Love their pricing structure. $795 per person or if you are a blogger and post a mention/link on your blog it is $395. Thus, my mention here.

Posted by johnza at 10:52 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 16, 2004

The price is right, or is it?

Lots of interest entries recently with some great thinking about the thorny topic of pricing: - Market pricing is the right approach, but how do you find that balance when you don't know the market yet? Business Pundit highlights the value of "soft entries" in pricing when you are first getting started. - Wizard of Ads warns against the temptation of temporary price promotions because they "produce up and down sales blips at a great cost" and marginal short term benefit. - And, apropos all the talk about dragraces, Brand Mantra, highlights the importance of doing the right work with your product and value proposition to avoid the never ending spiral of price wars. Lesson: make sure to do your ABCs across the market, competition and yourself before doing anything rash on your price and your margin.

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May 17, 2004

Are all VCs bad?

Marc's Voice. Something I sometimes wonder about. A good post from Marc Cantor, the founder of Macromedia, about how Movable Type got ruined by VCs. Sigh. Maybe so. At least I'd like to hope our folks at Geekfishing would know how to grow a great community and make a few bucks at the same time. It really isn't that hard.

Posted by rich at 10:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack