I see businesses in this area (especially restaurants) using monetary price as a marketing tool. Do your customers and prospects care or even notice?
In other words, is monetary price sensitivity an attribute of your target market or are you just hoping for an easy gain in market share? If you do gain market share, will you gain enough to offset losses caused by the lower price? Are monetary price oriented consumers even the type of customers you want?
Most small businesses realize (some too late) that customers who are seeking a low monetary price are really not the best customers to have. Better to attract customers who value the unique service only you can provide.
More sophisticated marketers compete using non-monetary price, or what it costs a customer - other than money - to buy a product or service. These “prices” include the time spent on shopping, ideological factors and the risk that the product will deliver expected or promised benefit.
Here are some recent examples:Business Week on Supermarkets
Supermarket Strategies: What's New at the Grocer
***
A Biznik article for service providers
Why Low Prices Don’t Attract Clients
***
2006 Harvard business writing on the folly of lowering monetary price
Low Prices = More Customers? Not Always
***
Cautionary item written after the dot com crash
Advice to services firms: Don't lower prices
***
A nice piece from Jack Trout, written during the 1991 recession
Marketing savvy can triumph over tough times
***
No comments:
Post a Comment