< It works for selling tomatoes at the markets. >
Come to think of it, it works for selling Leap Wireless shares too. Right here on my screen I have the instantaneous price, set by the public demand for Leap shares. There's no committee which meets to set the price. No pricing management needed. Just supply and demand [leaving aside conspiracy theories about market makers].
Similarly, when the rich but stupid daughters go into the tomato shop, they see a price per kilogram. If their purse is empty, they need to go and get Daddy to put more money in it. If they have money, they look at the price and press SEND if they like it. They like it if they figure there is a good-sized consumer surplus, RIGHT THEN, to use some fancy jargon. They don't have to try to predict their consumer surplus perceptions over the next month or year as current pricing plans require.
It has worked for millennia for tomatoes, but for some reason, people think that there is a New Era, where old business rules no longer apply and fancy marketing can turn supply and demand upside down. People like simple and predictable. Fancy marketing programmes are designed to avoid simple and introduce confusion, so that the importance of price can be reduced in the customers' minds. Customers are distracted by purchasing points, lucky draws, advertising, giveaways, and anything but the price of the thing the customer actually wants to buy.
"Simple" is the price on the screen then "Press SEND".
Mq
PS: Actually, being American, the said daughter of limited intellectual power will be bamboozled by kilograms; she might think it some odd terrorist threat to kil. She only knows pounds and that a lot of them are NOT what Kate Moss has. She won't want to buy pounds because she's losing them - marketers should therefore sell their stuff by the kilogram. Or maybe gram. It would seem really cheap to the innumerate daughters and they could be told they are getting exercize and losing pounds by pressing SEND. [In Britain, where they use pounds for their money, it's different, because pressing SEND would increase the pounds]
Perhaps the minutes should be sold by the gram, with one gram being the equivalent of one minute. |
