A Good Pricing Strategy Is An Alternative.

Remember the owner of the little jewellery shop who claimed "snow is free"? He told the citizens of Asheville, North Carolina, "everyone! As long as Asheville city has accumulated 3 inches of snow on Christmas day, you can buy Jewelry free of charge!" consumers can play the game as long as they buy any kind of jewellery from November 26, 2010 to December 11th.

If the snow is 3 inches thick, the boss will refund you.

When consumers heard such news, they found it interesting, at least in Asheville city.

Some people originally wanted to buy jewellery, and the two families would definitely choose this one directly.

The owner of the jewellery store gave us a lesson: playing the marketing rather than playing the price! Good pricing creativity can often get twice the result with half the effort. Please look at the following two stories, play a very different pricing strategy, but may become the next hot wave after group buying.

Daily down 1% home purchase website

If the price is modified, it can create a reasonable illusion, so that consumers feel "reasonable" and buy.

But reasonable price is not as good as low price, because the highest art of pricing is to make consumers feel "cheap enough".

Let's take a look at the higher art.

There is a website called "CountdownToBuy.com", the Chinese name is "countdown buy.Com", it is an e-commerce platform, just like Groupon, it only focuses on a certain selling method, and the selling method of CountdownToBuy.com is reciprocal every day, the price falls by 1% every day.

The website was founded in 2008, and it won $1 million 100 thousand at the end of 2010. It has not attracted too much attention from the mainstream Internet community.

But when it comes to pricing creativity, this CountdownToBuy.com becomes interesting.

What is even more interesting is that CountdownToBuy.com is currently only doing real estate.

For example, the "Diamante Cabo San Lucas" Golf Resort house, whose original price is 745 thousand dollars, will be reduced to 738 thousand dollars in second days if no one buys it on the first day, and the difference will be 7000 dollars a day.

Generally speaking, high priced goods are more suitable for a daily pricing strategy of 1%.

Just imagine, if there are several people who are interested in this house, what will happen? Is everyone's mood very tangled? And want to wait 1% more a day, for fear that if they do not buy it now, they will be robbed first and lose the good price.

As a result, the house is likely to have been bought at a very high price.

Attention! There is another feature of real estate which is different from general e-commerce. It is absolutely not necessary for everyone to buy together. Every house has only one buyer who can finally win the bid.

So pricing is more reasonable. When a day goes by, no one wants to grab the goods, which means that the price of the product is still too high.

OK, second days should be reduced a little bit, until the next day or no one to buy it, indicating that the price is still too high, and can further reduce the price until the price becomes reasonable.

Where else can it be used?

When you launch the same "innovative product" (each house is in different places, different designs, each is regarded as "innovative product"), it is impossible to know how much money it should make when it is really reasonable. The simplest way is that we can start shouting at the highest price, test the market, and no one will buy it, then we will automatically reduce the price.

No one bought it, then automatically lowered it until it was reasonable enough to buy it, and the original owner got the best price, even higher than the best selling price.

Because this "countdown" design will give buyers the illusion that there may be a lot of people eager to buy tomorrow, so buyers usually want to bid as soon as possible.

Such pricing practices are not only attractive to consumers, but also may not be a disadvantage to businessmen. It will not sell cheap and will only sell expensive (of course, this is more suitable for relatively stable real estate prices).

In addition to "innovative products", where can it be used?

"Artwork" should be another good application area, and it may also be used in the "rental housing".

What else, or even cheaper things, can be used to create an unprecedented business? This is a countdown and a day down 1%. Let's think about it.

Attention! CountdownToBuy.com or some of its variants may become the next big hit after Groupon.

From Groupon, we can see that this "sell the same thing" platform, no matter when it opens up, can make a lot of money if it can talk with merchants about a big discount, and it can master a large number of customer data, and then start selling second waves and third waves.

The difference between the two is that Groupon sells many things to people, and CountdownToBuy.com is more interesting. It sells only one thing and sells it to a single person. Such a website is easier to start. If you think of a way to sell a house, you will have the opportunity to sell it.

Gym-Pact next Groupon?

Recently, a very interesting new pricing model has appeared in the United States. According to Boston Globe, a new Harvard entrepreneur who graduated from Harvard Yifan Zhang, came up with a new idea. She decided to challenge her fitness business and set up a new profit model of fitness center, which is called "Gym-Pact" and Chinese plates into "fitness contract".

What is Gym-Pact? If you want to exercise, you can join it free of charge.

After free entry, fitness facilities can be used for free, but the prerequisite is to keep fit according to the time stipulated in the contract.

If you don't come once, Gym-Pact will be fined.

That is to say, those who work in the gym do not pay, but instead of those who do not come, they pay for fitness and support the gym so that the gym can survive! {page_break}

Is there any reason for such a pricing model? Yes!

First, Gym-Pact is playing the banner of "helping you to restrain yourself".

Because people usually only speak three times a week, but few people insist on it.

So, Gym-Pact persuaded everyone, come on, free gym! If you don't come in time, you need to pay!

This pricing model actually utilizes the psychology of consumers.

Because the entrepreneur learned from Harvard economics professor that what kinds of things are more motivations for people? Although future dreams (thinning, changing health) are the driving force of fitness, people will be more sensitive to "immediate benefits".

Therefore, a free time can attract consumers more.

Moreover, Gym-Pact will not be said to be using the impulse of users. Some customers really insist on sports because of Gym-Pact and enjoy free treatment.

In addition, Gym-Pact will not charge any fees when signing a contract with the customer, but it should leave the customer's credit card number first.

Although customers initially want to thank entrepreneurs for helping them to pay for them, they can join the gym free of charge, but Gym-Pact will punish 25 dollars a week if they do not stick to the original sports dates.

If we stop halfway, Gym-Pact will charge us $75 immediately.

Do entrepreneurs have to open their own gym? No!

It turns out that she only needs to negotiate with some gym, buy ten, twenty or even hundreds of gym membership cards with special preferential prices, and then collect a "fine" from customers through Gym-Pact to earn the difference.

The gym is naturally happy, because it can instantly increase business several times, and all the risks are pferred to Gym-P a c t.

So, at present, Zhang Yifang has been very easy to cooperate with two well-known fitness centers, the two are "Bally Total Fitness" and "Planet Fitness".

Will Gym-Pact lose money?

Maybe, but she is more likely to make super profits.

Gym-Pact disrupted the market price at the very beginning.

Because at first it was free (or exaggerated 77% off big discount), users almost wanted to sign directly without having to think about it.

The problem is that Gym-Pact will start deducting money. What we are concerned about is how much money they can deduct. The maximum amount Gym-Pact can deduct is higher than the general gym or low? The answer is high.

If the original fitness for a month is only $30, Gym-Pact can boldly pay 75 dollars for customers who fail to observe or finish ahead of time, and these customers will be willing to pay.

Because they are so confident that they will not be fined, and they will continue to enjoy this good free exercise. Moreover, customers can understand that Gym-Pact should be sold higher, because it is like an insurance company, and in order to afford other people's claims, everyone should pay a little more.

Similar to the Gym-Pact profit model, it may be possible to make a similar scale of insurance companies in a short time, and return a lot of funds, so that we must quickly invest in real estate or others.

What other ideas are similar to Gym-Pact?

Gym-Pact is also very inspiring for marketers.

In general, businesses do business, of course, to give potential customers some incentives, such as discount, cut prices, bargain prices, jump prices and other ways to attract customers to come and try.

But the idea of Chinese entrepreneur is very special. She takes free as the inducement, but makes money by the fact that "customers will be out of their own situation and will voluntarily abandon their benefits".

At that time, customers had nothing to say, and businesses were happy to make money.

At present, the only drawback of Gym-Pact is that the "variability" of pricing is not enough. In the future, there should be a variety of changing patterns, so that people can design their fitness schedule according to their own circumstances.

In this way, more people will want to join this crazy free fitness service.

Moreover, as long as human nature is always the case, Gym-Pact will always make money.

Because people always believe too much in their determination, and Gym-Pact is "good for you!"

The original Groupon is a new set of logic, so that businesses are interested and customers are also interested.

Now, Gym-Pact is also working out a set of logic. At present, it seems that merchants can not refuse (because Gym-Pact is directly paying them well), and guests can not refuse.

Gym-Pact is definitely not just the innovation mode of niche market, but let's think about it. The next Groupon may be ready to come out.

The answer is announced.

Why is the jewelry store owner so bold? If he really snows on Christmas day and accumulates 3 inches thick, is he not going to go bankrupt? No, the boss is too smart. He uses the interesting tools on the Internet, called weather insurance.

There used to be a company called WeatherBill that allowed businesses to make sure that the weather was insured.

For example, the woman who sells umbrellas in Seattle must earn more than fifteen days of rain every month. In the rainy season of March, she can buy a policy for WeatherBill that will rain in Seattle for more than 15 days in March. If the rain does not exceed fifteen days, the woman will get a compensation for the loss of her business.

Unexpectedly, this practice was seen by the jewelry store owner, and also to participate in weather insurance.

He checked in advance if he wanted to buy a "no snow on Christmas Day" policy to spend much money, and then put the cost in jewelry prices.

When the sales campaign ended in December 11th, the boss rushed to buy the weather insurance for the total amount of jewellery sold.

Perhaps the jewellery industry has too much profit margin. He will never lose money.