The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

You lost at Mario? Don’t blame yourself Robert, those technology geeks probably hacked the system to ensure they achieved glory> 🙂

This is a very apt post especially given the financial crisis because brands will be trying to find more ways to obtain increased incomes while people will be looking more closely at where their money is going.

Once this situation is over it will be the brands who walked the fine line between financial management and brand management that prosper but they’ve got to survive the winters of discontent first.

I would rather talk about the A380 issue in private but I do agree with the overall sentiment of this post and feel history will show this to be a pivotal time in the life of many brands.

Sadly John you’re right … which means you’re an genius of insight whereas I am nothing but an official loser. Damn!

I look forward to that conversation Lee … but I wish you wrote abit more about this issue because I know it’s one close to your heart and in these times where companies will cut back on advertising expenditure under the guise of ‘cost saving’ I think your counter opinion would be interesting to hear. Go on, be a love and say your piece because I know you will be when we get together, ha!

[PS: Are you still coming to PFSK?]

Finally Age – the reason the companies can get away with this sort of exploitative behaviour is because we bloody pay for it … the only way it’ll change is with economic pressure, not customer moaning … so start a ‘DO NOT BUY’ attitude and if enough of you do it, maybe you’ll be able to use the money you’ve saved on not having to buy FIFA ‘extra’s on another game or maybe even on having a kick about about with real, live human beings. 🙂

I’m not knocking you Age … remember I played a bloody MarioKart competition with a bunch of Google and Cynic folk last night.

How I am married is beyond me – except for the fact my wife found the ‘virtual competition’ exciting which means she’s just as sad as me. More so in fact, because she actually agreed to marry me which makes her even more of a loser.

God I love my wife!

You saw that? Damn …

Well you’ll see it again tomorrow – it was a ‘technical difficulty’ which can alse read as me not knowing what bloody day it is!

which restaurant? the one we couldn’t get into, or the one full of ärsche that we ended up eating at?

This post shows how stupid you are. You’d be funnier than SNL if it wasn’t for the sad fact you mean this shit.

Pricing is probably the mosty under-considered elemetns of the marketing mix and I’m sure it will thrill you to know that it is getting a lot of attention in the academic realm.

Price partitionin whereby companies break down the charges for the elements of their offer (as with Ryanair and Age’s toys) is becoming more common and it is argued that it focusses the mind not only on the cost element but makes customers think in detail about the added benefit provided by each element.

It cuts both ways of course – it can annoy and cause certain customers to abandon the purchase as “hidden’ costs mount, but also it can engenede a greater appreciation of the differentiation of your service vis avis the opposition and with that can come greater loyalty. Higher prices separate the truly involved from the indifferent. Well that’s the theory.

i think pricing is only under-considered when you get into service industries – when you have consumable goods pricing is the bit that’s usually over-considered. wouldn’t it be nice if there was an honest balance between the two. that, and more conversations about real value/worth, rather than how to make it appear so.

sure, but that assumption exists anyway, right?

anyone remember when a pint over Stella went over 3 quid in the UK? that was me – sorry. I worked at Inbev, pulled together the thinking for 6 continents (own hundreds of pubs and chains like its a scream, O’neils, all bar 1 etc)to justify it.
all we had to show was that the increase in revenue per pint sold added up to more than the loss from number of people who decided not to pay it. we backed it up with some pretty thin consumer research, (price being low down the decision criteria, people not knowing how much the individual parts of the bill were, not counting their change, high cost = high quality) but really it all just came down to an simple equation. The actual consumer psychology is fascinating, I’d love to see the academic stuff, but it won’t get the share of thought it deserves as long as brand owners continue to act out of lazy, short sighted self interest.
by the way – you were all correct about the banker – don’t know what I was thinking on Tuesday

Mr McG – I work at Lowe; what killed Stella (or is killing Stella) is the discounting. That 2000 Grand Prix winning IPA paper basically was the root of why the brand fucked itself.

I definitely buy into the idea of good profits and bad profits (price rises which makes your audience hate you, or in this case, discounting). NPS may be largely bollocks, but that’s a good theory.

i drink beer.

Not as much as the tatse of the stuff though.

I like the idea (not mine) that consumers already have in their minds the idea of a “fair price” and it is the job of marketing to discover what this “fair price” is (and often it bears no relation to the actual cost of the product). This idea of the “fair price” can sometimes be influenced by advertising, but not often.