What Matters Is the Perception of Value, Not So Much the Product

A lot has been written recently on how the perception of value rather than a formularized multiple of “cost” can help guide your pricing decisions. In a previous blog post, I recounted the story of the “thank you” gift given to the U.S. Ambassador to Brazil by the chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce. He presented Madame Ambassador with a small blue Tiffany box and said: “Here is a small gift to show our appreciation for your support.” Her answer should be writ large on Tiffany’s advertising. “There is no such thing as a small gift from Tiffany.” That says it all. Imagine that whatever was in the Tiffany blue box had actually been purchased less expensively from some other source. Would anyone question that the gift’s perceived value grew exponentially when it appeared to be from Tiffany? I remember a humorous ad in the university newspaper offering Brooks Brothers, Paul Stuart, and J. Crew labels to sew into your discount purchased garments to upgrade them by endowing them with the right Ivy League cachet. Somebody understood the magic of perception. If you haven’t watched Flint McGlaughlin’s excellent presentation from MECLABS Institute you should. His insights make a very strong case for his pricing methodology, which is really worth studying. Pricing of products or services is one of the key strategic aspects of all businesses. It is fairly easy to look at what your competitor is doing and use that as a benchmark. But “me-too” market pricing is seldom enough and certainly not the way to have a big success. If you can honestly get the customer to perceive a higher value for your product than a simple markup on cost, it permits you not only a higher ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment) but it also often provides a greater allowable cost per order (ACPO) — more money with which to promote, more customers and, hopefully, greater profits. The profusion of “subscription” offers in the marketplace is testament to the simple economic truth that if you can engage or enroll someone in a program of purchases, the likelihood of being able to transform a “product” into a “service” is greatly enhanced. And services tend to have higher margins. You may remember the story of the 40 or so Microsoft executives in Brazil who, when asked how many had subscriptions, very few hands went up. But when asked how many had Netflix, virtually all of the hands went up. Netflix had managed to eliminate the negative perception some people have to a “subscription” simply by not using the dreaded “S” word. What has been surprising is that Netflix competition’s pricing appears to have been forced down to undercut Netflix. Looking at all of the streamers, there appears to be much too little effort to segment customers, to determine their individual perceptions of the value of the services (other than to see how many people subscribe and at what cost) and to reengineer the offerings to cater to perceived values. As Rafi Mohammed, the founder of “Culture of Profit,” wrote in the Harvard Business Review: A one-price-fits-all strategy fails to acknowledge the simple fact that for any product or service, customers have unique needs and a different willingness to pay. With few rivals, mandating all-you-can-watch pricing was once tolerable. But to win in today’s competitive market, streaming companies need to step up their pricing strategies by offering choices to better accommodate the needs of their customers. He hits the jackpot when he observes, “ … customers have unique needs and a different willingness to pay” and these needs and this willingness are driven, to a significant degree, by how much each customer perceives the services to be worth. That perception reflects the subscriber’s assessment of the channel’s content. For certain affluent customers, the more content that is unique and the subscriber “believes” will meet his/her tastes, the more likely to purchase a premium package, especially if it has “exclusive” content. The couch potato who is less choosy and has a tighter budget will probably go for the cheapest option. As we can see in this example, the pricing has little to do with the product and service “costs,” which are probably similar for both the premium and economy versions. What matters is the perception of value. If you don’t embrace the reality that perception may matter more than some other criterion for pricing and how your prospect looks at your offering, you may never have given anyone a little blue box from Tiffany.

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What Matters Is the Perception of Value, Not So Much the Product

Peter J. Rosenwald

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Peter J. Rosenwald