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> "Trouble is, almost everybody buys the cheapest ticket." Ding ding ding! That's the trouble: we've gotten people in a state where they're sensitive to the ve

> "Trouble is, almost everybody buys the cheapest ticket." Ding ding ding! That's the trouble: we've gotten people in a state where they're sensitive to the very last dollar in price. People will actually pick the worse ticket just to save $5. I used to work at an online retailer where part of our job was to market environmentally-friendly, recyclable, easy-to-open (read: no clamshell, no thick plastic) packaging to customers. We did some research into the price premium people are willing to pay for the lack of hassle. The answer was close to zero. This is a classic race to the bottom, I have no ideas on how to fix it.

jerf 13y ago
It's hard to even define what a fix looks like. If a customer verbally claims to want feature X, but it turns out they're willing to pay $0 for it and no more... do they really want feature X? This is a richer question than it may first appear.
- ForHackernews 13y ago
  There are plenty of things people want, but don't want to pay for. To take a very prominent and obvious example, most people want to have sex, but the amount most people are willing to straight up pay for sex is around $0. Regarding airlines, I think the issue is one of temporal duration. I'm willing to suck it up for one (or two) 8 hour flights. It's uncomfortable, but whatever, it's over. I'm not going to pay an extra $100 to spare myself some temporary discomfort. If, on the other hand, airlines offered some kind of subscription service (a la Amazon Prime) where I could pay $200/year to spare myself all future discomfort by getting a "free" upgrade to economy-plus on any flights I take, then I might be interested.
  - jerf 13y ago
    "To take a very prominent and obvious example, most people want to have sex, but the amount most people are willing to straight up pay for sex is around $0." That's a bad example. There's ways to "pay" for sex other than just handing cash directly to the "other participant". In fact, most sex probably is not "free", if analyzed sufficiently carefully. Even if we count the monetary value of time at zero.
    - ForHackernews 13y ago
      Similarly, customers appear to be unwilling to pay more for the face value of the ticket, which is why airlines are trying to make up revenue on other "extras": baggage, meals, extra leg room, etc.

jerf 13y ago

It's hard to even define what a fix looks like. If a customer verbally claims to want feature X, but it turns out they're willing to pay $0 for it and no more... do they really want feature X? This is a richer question than it may first appear.

ForHackernews 13y ago
There are plenty of things people want, but don't want to pay for. To take a very prominent and obvious example, most people want to have sex, but the amount most people are willing to straight up pay for sex is around $0. Regarding airlines, I think the issue is one of temporal duration. I'm willing to suck it up for one (or two) 8 hour flights. It's uncomfortable, but whatever, it's over. I'm not going to pay an extra $100 to spare myself some temporary discomfort. If, on the other hand, airlines offered some kind of subscription service (a la Amazon Prime) where I could pay $200/year to spare myself all future discomfort by getting a "free" upgrade to economy-plus on any flights I take, then I might be interested.
- jerf 13y ago
  "To take a very prominent and obvious example, most people want to have sex, but the amount most people are willing to straight up pay for sex is around $0." That's a bad example. There's ways to "pay" for sex other than just handing cash directly to the "other participant". In fact, most sex probably is not "free", if analyzed sufficiently carefully. Even if we count the monetary value of time at zero.
  - ForHackernews 13y ago
    Similarly, customers appear to be unwilling to pay more for the face value of the ticket, which is why airlines are trying to make up revenue on other "extras": baggage, meals, extra leg room, etc.