Demand-Based Pricing

Demand-Based Pricing

Demand-based pricing is any pricing method that uses consumer demand – based on perceived value – as the central element.

Demand -Based Pricing

Demand-based pricing, also known as customer-based pricing, is any pricing method that uses consumer demand – based on perceived value – as the central element. These include: price skimming, price discrimination, psychological pricing, bundle pricing, penetration pricing, and value-based pricing.

Pricing factors are manufacturing cost, market place, competition, market condition, and quality of the product.

Price Skimming

Price skimming is a pricing strategy in which a marketer sets a relatively high price for a product or service at first, then lowers the price over time. In other words, price skimming is when a firm charges the highest initial price that customers will pay. As the demand of the first customers is satisfied, the firm lowers the price to attract another, more price-sensitive segment.

The objective of a price skimming strategy is to capture the consumer surplus. It allows the firm to recover its sunk costs quickly before competition steps in and lowers the market price. If this is done successfully, then theoretically no customer will pay less for the product than the maximum they are willing to pay. In practice, it is almost impossible for a firm to capture all of this surplus.

Price Skimming: These are graphical representations of price skimming. Price skimming is sometimes referred to as riding down the demand curve.

Price Descrimination

Price discrimination exists when sales of identical goods or services are transacted at different prices from the same provider. Product heterogeneity, market frictions, or high fixed costs (which make marginal-cost pricing unsustainable in the long run) can allow for some degree of differential pricing to different consumers, even in fully competitive retail or industrial markets. Price discrimination also occurs when the same price is charged to customers that have different supply costs. Price discrimination requires market segmentation and some means to discourage discount customers from becoming resellers and, by extension, competitors. This usually entails using one or more means of preventing any resale, keeping the different price groups separate, making price comparisons difficult, or restricting pricing information.

Psychological Pricing

Psychological pricing is a marketing practice based on the theory that certain prices have a psychological impact. The retail prices are often expressed as “odd prices”: a little less than a round number, e.g. $19.99. The theory is this drives demand greater than would be expected if consumers were perfectly rational. Bundle pricing is a marketing strategy that involves offering several products for sale as one combined product. This strategy is very common in the software business, in the cable television industry, and in the fast food industry in which multiple items are combined into a complete meal. A bundle of products is sometimes referred to as a package deal, a compilation, or an anthology.

Penetration Pricing

Penetration pricing is the pricing technique of setting a relatively low initial entry price, often lower than the eventual market price, to attract new customers. The strategy works on the expectation that customers will switch to the new brand because of the lower price. Penetration pricing is most commonly associated with a marketing objective of increasing market share or sales volume, rather than to make profit in the short term. The main disadvantage with penetration pricing is that it establishes long term price expectations for the product as well as image preconceptions for the brand and company. This makes it difficult to eventually raise prices.

Value-based Pricing

Value-based pricing sets prices primarily, but not exclusively, on the value, perceived or estimated, to the customer rather than on the cost of the product or historical prices. Value-based-pricing is most successful when products are sold based on emotions (fashion), in niche markets, in shortages (e.g. drinks at open air festival at a hot summer day), or for indispensable add-ons (e.g. printer cartridges, headsets for cell phones). By definition, long term prices based on value-based pricing are always higher or equal to the prices derived from cost-based pricing.