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It was my experience that people approached an online purchase of six dollars with the same deliberation and thoughtfulness they might bring to bear when buying
by kawera 16y ago
It was my experience that people approached an online purchase of six dollars with the same deliberation and thoughtfulness they might bring to bear when buying a new car.
Much like people complaining about the price of a gorgeous $2.99 iOS app while ordering a $6 coffee.
- TillE 16y agoBut the coffee is coffee. You know what you're getting. That $3 iOS app or $6 web service may or may not be entirely useless to you; it's quite difficult to know. I mean, it's easy to make sarcastic quips about the mentality. But there are good, clear reasons why it exists. And if you understand them, maybe you can do something about it - make it very clear exactly what your app does, include informative screenshots, offer a demo version, make payment easy, etc.
- loire280 16y agoIf it's an app that is supposed to be useful, it may very likely be worth $15 to you. A game that you enjoy for a few hours has already beaten a movie rental in value. Most users have, on average, gotten more than their money's worth on their app purchases.
- GFischer 16y agoI can get a ticket for a movie for U$ 4 in my country (Uruguay), yet there's no such price discrimination for games - it's the US retail price or the highway. Web/app pricing usually doesn't take into consideration the 3rd world (plus, the lack of availability of international credit cards or other easy purchase options, coupled with the attractiveness of piracy and low wages, makes selling stuff here a tricky proposition).
- heri0n 16y agoEven if you are from a 3rd world, if you can afford a smartphone worth several hundred dollars wouldn't you be able to afford a 99c app?
- GFischer 16y agoWow, I didn't realize Angry Birds is really 99 cents. I was thinking they cost U$ 15 or something (even Plants vs Zombies, which is U$ 19 on the PC and I was considering buying, is only 3 dollars for the iPhone). My father bought a Samsung Galaxy last week, and it's carrier subsidized so he pays 20 dollars/month for a year. My own Nokia N86 was also carrier subsidized at U$ 30/month for a year (and that included 300 minutes' worth of calls). Even the iPhone is carrier subsidized at about U$ 50/month for 2 years. In those cases, paying an extra U$ 15 would make a difference, but U$ 0.99.. you're absolutely right.
- tptacek 16y agoYou know what you're getting because you've been trained to associate a price point with it. The retail markup on coffee is huge.
- tomjen3 16y agoSo the question is: how do we change the price point people associate with this service to be higher?
- tptacek 16y agoStep #1: Pick a market that isn't saturated by companies that are hypnotized into selling services below cost. Step #2: Deliver a technology product into that market. Step #3: Charge money for the product. You can skip Step #1 (like 37signals did), but why cause yourself undue stress? All the customer money is outside the echo chamber.
- jarek 16y agoIt's worth noting that unless you get siphon, any "coffee" you can find for $6 is much more than just coffee.
- tptacek 16y agoYes, there is also 15 cents worth of milk and energy in it.
- jarek 16y agoDidn't want to get into this, but yeah, in addition to 5 cents' worth of coffee, 30 cents' worth of barista time (fixed), and probably around 50 cents' worth of lease (fixed) and a bit more for equipment (fixed).
- tptacek 16y agoWe can wrap this up tidily by observing that the "coffee house experience" probably does cost some reasonable markdown from $6/cup. The coffee itself, though, is a good we have been trained to pay an exorbitant markup for.
- aeden 16y agoI love that quote, and the article as a whole.