What is a Product Pricing Strategy?

The prices you set for the products or services that you sell is an important consideration for any type of business. If you set your prices too low, you stand to miss out on the opportunity to make as much revenue as possible but if you price them too high, you risk the chance of pricing yourself out of the market and losing out on customers. So, what is pricing strategy and how can businesses create a good pricing plan? Product pricing is a very fine line and it is important that any business have a strategy to help them understand the different factors and elements that need to be considered. A product pricing strategy is a model that a business develops to ensure that they are offering the best prices to their customers while still ensuring that they are making a profit on the products or services that they sell! There are many factors that need to be taken into consideration when developing product price strategies; overall goals around revenue, marketing, the target market, consumer demand and many more. 

What is The Importance of a Product Pricing Strategy?

A business cannot simply estimate how much a product should be sold for in a market, there needs to be thought put into it. How a business will price the products and services that it sells is incredibly important and can make or break the success of the company. You need to ensure that you are covering your costs while still making a profit while still meeting the needs of your customers and not pricing yourself out of the market. Pricing strategies in business help a company to better understand both the market as a whole and the customers who are purchasing within the market, ensuring that they are able to increase revenue and make sales. 

 

Having good pricing strategies in marketing are also important as the pricing plan you use will determine how a marketing team should promote a product or service. Are you offering the best price? Do you have the newest products? Knowing these different elements will help a marketing team promote the best features of the product or service to the public! 

How To Optimise a Product Pricing Strategy?

Creating a good product pricing strategy involves optimising your strategy to ensure that you are meeting the needs of your customers as well as earning a profit off of what you sell. The following are just a few things to consider when optimising your product pricing strategy! 

 

  • Know your customers: A key part of any price strategy plan is knowing who you are selling to and what they want. Certain markets are more likely to purchase products for the lowest prices while others are interested in gaining access to the best products or services no matter the price. Understanding who you are marketing and selling your offers to will help determine which type of pricing strategy would be better suited to your target market! 
  • Monitor: Once you have determined who your target audience is and what is important to them you will come up with a type of pricing strategy to use. Though you may assume that the work is done, it is important that you monitor sales to ensure that you have aligned your revenue goals correctly with the expectations of your customers. Different pricing strategies will monitor different elements, but looking at the overall sales is always key. 
  • Analyse customer and pricing data: You will need to ensure that you are aware of the needs of your customer as well as the pricing market when creating a product pricing strategy. Using data can help to ensure that you are making decisions based on real-time information rather than taking estimated guesses. Relying on the data that you collect and using it when creating pricing plans will ensure that you are pricing yourself well while still keeping the customers in mind! This will also help you to determine which pricing strategy would best suit your business. 

What are The Types of Product Pricing Strategies?

There are many different types of pricing strategies that can be used to develop your own pricing plans. The one that you use may depend on the goals you are trying to achieve and the unique features of your target audience. The following are just a few pricing strategy examples and how each one works! 

Value-Based Pricing

Basing your products on how much your target audience is willing to pay is how the value-based pricing strategy works. This strategy looks to the customers when deciding on the best prices for certain products or services. While the price that your customers are willing to pay may mean less revenue for you, it is a great way to show your audience that you are looking out for their best interest, which ultimately instils a sense of loyalty. When it comes to gaining long-lasting customers, value-based pricing is extremely beneficial! 

Competitive pricing

A competitive pricing strategy involves optimising your product pricing strategy by basing it on your competitors. This strategy looks to base its pricing strategy on what competitors are doing, not looking at their own costs or consumer demand. This type of pricing strategy is generally used by businesses that work in highly saturated markets as the smallest difference in prices between competitors may make all the difference. Pricing your products or services slightly below the prices of your competitors can drive the market your way and increase the number of customers and sales you make. 

Price skimming

As new products enter the market, many businesses will surge the price of the product due to the demand for it. As these newer products spend more time on the market, however, a business will have to lower the prices as the demand decreases. This is known as price skimming and it is a popular kind of product pricing strategy. Prices do not drop immediately however, they gradually decrease over time. One of the most popular kinds of products that are usually priced according to this strategy is technology products. If you think of the latest phone and how it starts off at a high price and slowly lowers as newer products enter the market, you can see how price skimming works. 

Cost-Plus Pricing

A cost-plus pricing strategy looks to base a business’s pricing strategy on how much it costs to complete or produce a service or product. This can be extremely beneficial as it ensures that you are making more than it costs to complete a service or produce a product, ensuring that you make money. This type of product pricing strategy is also known as a markup strategy because a business will mark up the price based on how much they are hoping to make. Usually, businesses will apply a certain percentage onto the cost-price of products or services, for example, if a product costs around $10 to make, a business may use a markup of 50%, selling the product for $15. 

Penetration Pricing

A penetrating pricing strategy involves entering the market at a very low price to gain the attention of customers and draw them to your business and away from competitors. While this can be a great method when looking at short-term revenue, it is not something that can be sustained for a long period of time. Penetration pricing is commonly used by new businesses or brands that are entering new markets. This is a great way to market your brand to a new audience as it makes a statement and draws in the attention of buyers. 

Economy Pricing

When a product does not cost a lot of money to produce, it means that retailers are able to sell it for a lower price. Economy pricing involves selling a product for only a bit more than it costs to produce and relying on the product to sell itself with limited marketing costs involved. One of the main things that a business needs to be sure of is that these kinds of products are going to sell in high volumes as this will ensure that a good profit is made. 

Dynamic Pricing

Another type of pricing strategy is dynamic pricing and it is based on using the demands of the market to price certain products or services. If a product or service is in high demand, a business will surge the prices as a way to benefit from the customer demand. A great example of this kind of product pricing strategy is when hotels will increase their prices during the peak holiday season when many travellers are looking for accommodation. Due to the high demand, people will be willing to pay more and therefore a hotel may fluctuate their prices to take advantage of this increase. Dynamic pricing strategies do take their competition into account, but as demand increases, other businesses are also likely to be increasing their prices.