How to Pick the Price for Your Product by Amazon Product Manager

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How to Pick the Price for Your Product by Amazon Product Manager

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Aditya Vikram Bhuwania

Tonight’s Speaker

Aditya Vikram Bhuwania

Picking the Right Price

for your Product

Comprehensive Pricing (10 mins)

Different Types of Pricing(15 mins)

Price Communication (7 mins)

Pricing Exercise (8 mins)

1% increase in Price leads to 11% rise in Profit Margin

1% decrease in cost of goods leads to 6% rise in Profit Margin

1% increase in operational efficiency leads to 4% rise in Profit Margin

Comprehensive

Pricing

Pricing

Strategy and

GoalsPrice Tools &

Software

Pricing

Architecture &

Implementation

Price

Analytics

Pricing

Organization

Pricing Strategy &

Goals

• Pricing Goals should be created in line with Corporate

Goal

• Pricing Goals should be well understood by the

Product Manger

• A solid pricing strategy should consider following 4

aspects about your product:

➢ Who are my customers?

➢ What is value I am providing to the customers?

➢ What customer problem does my product solves?

➢ Who all are your Competition?

Pricing Strategy &

Goals

Pricing Architecture &

Implementation

Pricing

Architecture &

Implementatio

n

• Pricing Architecture represents the initial price setting

method

• A solid price architecture includes costs of goods sold,

and unit contribution cost :

➢ R&D or Product Development

➢ Operations

➢ Manufacturing

➢ Marketing/Advertising

• Pricing Implementation means how is price

communicated to the customers, sales and everybody

else in the organization

Pricing Tools & Software

Pricing Tools &

Software

• Smart data analytics, competitive intelligence tracking,

Margin analysis, etc. can be done through pricing

softwares

• Quote-to-Invoices are the tools for creating, presenting

your price quotes to your customers

• Configure-Price-Quotes tools are used by

sophisticated and complex software solution makers to

create pricing packages

• Pros, Vendavo, Zilliant are some best in-class pricing

softwares

Pricing Analytics

• Product managers need to create effective data

analytics and tracking points of value is important for

price setting.

• Understanding Customer Segments, product and

feature mix, pricing bundles, SKUs should be analyzed

over time, geos and competitors

• Price Waterfall and Dispersion Charts are effective

tools to understand the true Net Profit and source of

Price leakages due to in-effective discounting

• For SaaS companies, the margin on entire deal/quotes

and each of the products should be analyzed to help

sales and marketing efforts

Pricing

Analytics

Pricing Organization

Pricing

Organization

• Usually Product Manager are responsible for price

setting process - An effective Product manager should

not only do data and market analysis but also take

feedback from sales, field engineers, pricing managers

to understand the customer’s ability to play

• A strong pricing organization involves 2-3 tiers of

Pricing managers and director - each manager is given

liberty to maintain P&L statement of their business line.

• A pricing organization has to collaborate with Sales

teams during the deal negotiation process to make

sure the deal goes through and at the same time

protect profit margin

Types of Pricing

Strategies

Pricing that make sense for

your customer and product

Sales and Profit over

the Life Cycle of the

Product

The right Pricing model depends on the

what phase your product is.

The Pricing model can change vastly

over the life cycle of the product -

Sophisticated transition of pricing model

can cause a significant blow to you

competitor.

Cost Plus Pricing • Cost Plus pricing is a cost-based method for setting the

prices of goods and services. Under this approach, the direct

material cost, direct labor cost, and overhead costs for a

product are added up and added to a markup percentage (to

create a profit margin) in order to derive the price of the

product.

• This methodology is used for pricing mature products.

• Competitive advantage is gained in 2 ways

1. By providing more features and/or value at same price

to the customers

2. Giving better prices by achieving cost efficiencies like

improved operations, cheaper raw material, cheaper

labor, etc.

• Used for standard products, with little or no differentiation.

Not ideal for growth industries especially making any

software or tech products

Skimming• Selling a product at a high price, sacrificing high

sales to gain a high profit is called "skimming" the

market.

• Skimming is usually employed to reimburse the

cost of investment of the original research into

the product: commonly used in consumer

electronics industry, e.g., Smart Phones, Smart

Watches, etc.

• This strategy is often used to target "early

adopters" of a product or service, who are

relatively lower price-sensitive: their need for the

product outweighing their need to economize; a

greater understanding of the product's value; or

simply having a higher disposable income.

Penetration Pricing • Penetration pricing is strategy of setting the price low

with the goals of attracting customers and gaining

market share. The prices are raised once the market

share is gained.

• This strategy can create goodwill among the early

adopters segment and can create more trade through

word of mouth.

• This strategy is very effective in discourage new

competitors from entering a market position.

• Great strategies for startups to increase demand for

their product and gain their customer attention.

• The main disadvantage with penetration pricing is that it

establishes long-term price expectations for the product,

and image preconceptions for the brand and company.

That makes it difficult to eventually raise prices.

• Also, one need to keep cost of material and operations

Freemium Pricing

• Freemium is a pricing strategy by which a

product or service (typically software, media,

games or web services) is provided free of

charge, but money (premium) is charged for

additional features, services, or virtual goods

through tiered pricing

• There are multiple ways this is implemented

: Limited features, Limited capacity, Limited

use time, Limited support, etc.

• Ideal for startups and software companies to

get a lot of traction among users.

Communicating value proposition for paid

tiered is very necessary.

Value Based Pricing

• Value-based price is a pricing strategy which sets

prices according to the perceived or estimated value

of a product/service to the customer rather than

according to the cost of the product or historical

prices.

• This pricing strategy is frequently used where the

value to the customer is many times the cost of

producing the item or service.

• The perceived value will depend on the alternatives

open to the customer. For e.g., We compare the

price of next best option and see if the new

product/service is cheaper than that.

• Sophisticated Value-based models can have

different prices for different types of customers,

and/or in different geos and/or feature

Pricing WaterfallIdeal way to calculate the net Pocket margin

Price Communication

Apple Home Pod launch 2017 Video : Scroll to start at 12: 39. Stop at 13:05

• Communicating the reasoning and logic behind pricing your product is

EXTREMELY important, especially if you opt for Value based pricing or

Skimming.

• Price increase communication should be taken seriously – A Product manager

should consult legal team, marketing and professional writers before making any

price increase.

Price Communication done right

Price Communication gone wrong Netflix 2011 : Netflix splits DVD and streaming services➢ Netflix created 2 different services DVD and Streaming and each of them

were priced at $7.99.➢ A price reduction for only DVD or only Streaming user - This was supposed

to be win-win for both.➢ Netflix lost 80k subscribers and their stocked tanked by 80% in span of 7

months.

Price Communication : Lesson learnt Netflix Oct 5, 2017 : Netflix is raising the price of its mostpopular plan➢Netflix raised it’s prices by $1 to 10.99 for the most popular plan and $2 for

the 4K Premium Plan to $13.99.➢ Kept the price of basic plan at $7.99 for the price sensitive subscribers➢ Times the price raise just weeks ahead of much awaited 2nd season of

“Stranger Things”➢ Communicated the increase as a necessary step to keep producing quality

content

➢Stock prices went up by 9% in 3 days.

Ethical Pricing

April 3, 2017: Mylan hit with

racketeering suit over big price

hikes of EpiPen

➢ "Mylan has tried every trick in the book to avoid

taking accountability to the millions of people who

are living without the EpiPen they need to

prevent a life-threatening allergic reaction,"

➢ Big drug-maker Mylan was slapped with a class-

action racketeering lawsuit that claims the

company engaged in an illegal scheme to

dramatically increase the list price of its EpiPen

anti-allergy device over the past decade. Mylan

has 94% market share

➢ Prices were $100 in 2009 and they are sitting at

$600 in 2017

Pricing Exercise 1 • Launching a Mexican Beer – Lager. Made from blue agave and Mexican

spices

• Initial launch in California, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Florida and Phoenix

• Alcohol content : 4.5% abv

• Calories : 95

• Competition price: $1.2-$1.75

Pricing Exercise 2 • Launching a craft American India Pale Ale

• Initial launch in California, Portland, Washington, Texas, Phoenix, Florida

• Blonde , Mildly Bitter ( 50 IBU) with a kick of orange, spices and ginger

• Alcohol content : 8% abv

• Competition price: $4 -$8 per serving

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