Apple recently unveiled three new iPhone models – iPhone XR, iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, with all three steeply priced at US$749, US$999 and US$1,099 respectively. The news no doubt rattled consumers with some vowing not to switch iPhones unless malfunction occurs. Others pledged allegiance to Android phones, and some mocked Apple for jacking up […]

Americans go to the pharmacy a lot. We fill an average 12.6 prescriptions per year, and more than half of us regularly take medications—four, on average. Like covering rent or filling the gas tank, taking and paying for medicine has become part of our everyday lives. It’s not a stretch to suggest that the average […]

Hilton has made it a little more difficult to do so, through dynamic pricing (which means that the number of points you need to book a room is relative to the cash price for that particular room, which as we all know can change from minute to minute based on how many people are looking […]

A CBC News and Toronto Star investigation has revealed something a lot of us have already suspected – Ticketmaster is ripping customers off huge. The two news outlets did some digging into ticket sales for Bruno Mars shows in Toronto over the last seven months and uncovered the shocking ways that the company has been […]

Sharp declines corresponded with changes to the service (seen above). Downloads dropped from 330,000 in June to about 240,000 in July after MoviePass announced its unpopular surge pricing feature, in which users would have to pay extra for popular movies during busy showtimes. Downloads then dropped to 80,000 in August after MoviePass announced it would […]

This Week in Pricing is a collection of pricing focused news, thought leadership , events, jobs and professional education resources for pricers. This Edition is brought to you by:   Vistaar Vistaar is leading SaaS software provider that enables companies to optimize pricing, promotion, configuration, and rebate management.  Our solutions are powered by predictive models leveraged […]

Pricing News Daily is a digest of top pricing strategy in the news, strategy expert and technology leader’s thought leadership, industry news and events, and resources for pricing professionals, business owners, creative professionals, and independent contractors.   This Edition is brought to you by:   Vistaar Vistaar is leading SaaS software provider that enables companies […]

The U.S. House of Representatives has split with the Senate over requiring pharmaceutical companies to disclose the list price of their prescription medications in television advertisements. The notion of including the cost of medications was a key provision of the White House’s healthcare proposal. In August the Senate approved a measure to disclose drug prices […]

MoviePass attracted a lot of users with its $10 one-movie-per-day subscription plan, but as the last few months have shown, that price point was rather unsustainable. As its money troubles mounted, the company hit its subscribers with a number of sudden plan changes including surge pricing, limited film selections and, recently, a reduction to just […]

In an effort to get the first set of FY 2019 appropriations bills to the President’s desk, US House leaders scrapped a bipartisan amendment that would have required drugmakers to include list prices in direct-to-consumer (DTC) television ads. The amendment—sponsored by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA)—was offered and subsequently withdrawn during a […]

Dynamic pricing is one of the most exciting topics in the pricing world right now, with digitalization providing many great opportunities for companies to be more responsive with their pricing. But despite its technological underpinnings, dynamic pricing requires strong human oversight directed by a clear strategy. Dynamic pricing is certainly not new, having been pioneered […]

So negotiations began. For six months, Puttnam tried every tactic he knew to reduce the $2 million price tag. Each time, Lancaster reconfirmed his desire to make the film and pointed to the only stumbling block: his $2 million fee. With only days left before filming began, the Local Hero production team admitted defeat and […]

What we’ve found over the years doing this work is that pricing in the ICT space is often more art than science, and that customer anecdotes about pricing are often as valuable and instructive to pricing strategy as the market pricing data sets produced. Our approach to pricing research is rooted in interviews with representatives […]

I had the fantastic opportunity to moderate a roundtable discussion on the topic at the 6th Annual Manufacturing Pricing Excellence in Milan and listen to different viewpoints. The one common thread among all pricing leaders in the face of the growth of ecommerce: “we cannot lose control of our prices.” There was no common thread, however, on […]

There was an interesting article last week in Research Live about the gamification of pricing research arguing that traditional approaches need to be more engaging in order to improve data quality, limit respondent bias and reduce the rationalisation of responses. Improving traditional approaches and respondent engagement can only be a good thing but the underlying […]

While such strategies persist in used car showrooms and flea markets, they mostly went out of fashion in the developed world a few hundred years ago when fixed prices came along. Some think it started with department stores — Bennetts in Derby in the 18th century or John Wanamaker’s stores in Philadelphia the next. Others […]

Last week, I shared a presentation with an executive team at a large public SaaS company on everything I’ve learned about pricing. Here’s a summary of the frameworks and theory that I’ve aggregated over a decade of investing in startups. Why do we set prices? Setting aside the important reasons of generating revenue and maintaining […]

Most current iterations of cryptocurrencies are, at their core, meant to operate as currencies. However, currencies have, for many centuries, needed to meet a number of specific criteria to be recognised as such – namely, acting as a unit of account, a medium of exchange, and a store of value. Despite fulfilling most of the […]

During the 2007 financial crisis, former Citigroup CEO Charles Prince famously said: “When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.” Looking at the bike-sharing business in China today, you see a lot of such dancing. You […]

In the early days of music streaming, companies experimented with offerings priced at around $5, but those services usually came with stringent limitations on song skipping or number of registered devices. Consumer response was tepid, as users seemed willing to spend the extra money for full control over their listening experience. Industry competitors, led by […]