Page 82 - Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing - PDFDrive.com

Ugly Cats, Boat Shoes, and Overpriced Jewelry: The Sheer Illogic
of Pricing

A Denver woman needed to sell four reasonably cute cats. She placed this
classified ad in the Denver Post:

“Ugly Cats. $100 each. 555-5555.”
More than eighty people called. She said she could have sold the cats for far
more.
Timberland was struggling in the early 1980s. The company made a good
boat-type shoe and priced it below the leader, Topsiders. A great product for the
price—but not a good business. Then Timberland did something fairly simple: It
increased its price to be well above Topsiders.
Sales boomed—just as they boomed for American Express when it took over
the prestige niche in credit cards by pricing its card just one dollar more than a
Diners Club card.
In Influence, Robert Cialdini tells about the frustrated owner of a Native
American jewelry store in Arizona. The owner had not been able to sell some
turquoise jewelry, even though it was peak tourist season. She tried sales.
Nothing. She tried sales “training” (she encouraged her staff to push the
jewelry). Nothing.
Finally, the night before she was leaving for a trip, the owner left her head
saleswoman a note: “Everything in this display case, price × ½.”
The owner returned a few days later and learned that everything had sold—
but not for the reason she thought. The saleswoman had misread the owner’s
scribbled note to read “price × 2,” and doubled the price of everything!
Some people think pricing is one of the more logical acts of marketing. These
examples say something different.
Don’t assume that logical pricing is smart pricing. Maybe your price, which
makes you look like a good value, actually makes you look second-rate.

Pricing: The Resistance Principle

Just months into business, I have made my first great discovery about business,”
a young woman recently told me. “There’s one simple way to get all the business