David Emery OnlineOn Pricing
7 September 2007
As evidenced by all the current talk around the iPhone’s pricing point, the value of goods is a very hard thing to really pin down. In the case of the iPhone, I think the value is fairly clear (it has a high value) and many, many people were prepared to pay for it at its original price.
Of course they’re going to be pretty irritated by a 30% price drop, but it’s not like they’ve actually lost anything. In fact, with the $100 store credit they’ve now got they’ve come out on top: they paid a price that they found reasonable, and got $100 for free!
I can’t help but think that the whole thing was carefully orchestrated to make the iPhone price drop as publicised as possible; Apple quite patently wants lots of people to buy them, so what better thing to do then to try a create a “proper” story out of a simple price drop?
Continuing on the topic of pricing, how much would pay for a single (of the music variety)?
£0.99?
£1.99?
£3.99?
£100?
It is, of course, just a savvy piece of marketing. Faced with the prospect of trying to sell 10,000 £0.99 singles – which is a extremely hard task – 100 £100 singles sounds much more achievable, if you can find the requisite amount of people that think it’s worth it. That’s a big if, of course, but I think with a suitable story and slant behind the project, coupled with things like deluxe packaging and artwork you could probably do it.
In fact, I think todays music market is ripe for this kind of offer. There’s a small but significant sector of the market that really appreciate the physical product inherent in music’s past – witness the ever growing popularity of 7” singles. The logic conclusion of this rebellion against downloads and CDs is concepts like this – paying more for a better experience. The actual music is identical in each case, but the exclusivity and story make it worth so much more.