Forum Moderators: buckworks
See, I put this on my site (it looked good), but my friend and a few people I mentioned it to didn't think it would be good. They thought the feature would stop people through the buying process OR or make my customers to price conscience... Any thoughts?
The equation then becomes: how much benefit will you gain from this little bit of time-tested, tried-and-true psychological customer manipulation, vs. how much you'll ever actually have to pay out for it. Highly likely all you'll ever be called upon to do, is sell a product at a buck below one of your competitors' prices, once a year.
What's the worst that could happen? Maybe, omigod, you'll be forced sell one item, once, at your direct wholesale cost. Surely no competitor can sell lower than that?
In exchange for taking this "risk" you gain free, vital intelligence on who your competitors are, plus an extraordinarily reassuring and effective sales incentive.
That's why big retail corporations offer such guarantees. They know consumers are lazy, gullible herd animals with short attention spans. Shoppers just want to be told a nice story that makes them feel good about you. It's the very essence of elemental marketing.
OK - absolute ultimate worst case scenario (like if you've been smoking too much crack perhaps): Suddenly you have zillions of customers demanding you beat XYZ Corp on their widget offer. You get 50 eMails, omigod. So you make those sales at very little profit, or just for the sake of discussion at zero profit, and you shut off the dealybob.
The sky is falling, the sky is falling, the sky is falling. You've opened the floodgates and utter ruin is sure to follow...
And one more thing: price has become way more vital a factor in the Internet Age than it has ever been in any other prior epoch. Never before could any consumer so easily research not only competing retailer's prices, but wholesalers' and even primary manufacturer's prices for comparison as well.
price has become way more vital a factor in the Internet Age than it has ever been in any other prior epoch. Never before could any consumer so easily research not only competing retailer's prices,
Yes, and no. In the 90s, pundits predicted an ecommerce future dominated by Froogle-like shopping bots that would report which site sold for the lowest price, down to the penny. Perfect, automated competition. Great for shoppers, but dreadful for most sellers.
But it never happened. There are too many variables... shipping cost and speed, vendor reliability, selection...far, far more.
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We sell many products. On most, we're dirt cheap. On some, we're among the highest on the web. We experiment with pricing. Heck, we even make pricing errors, and have briefly sold at outrageously high or suicidally low cost.
Frankly, I think a good case can be made in favor of selling at very HIGH margins.
As the Wall Street Journal reported about two years ago, despite predictions to the contrary, studies have shown that web shoppers do surprisingly little comparison shopping.
They were right - its called eBay. There are many comparison sites that equalize the variables that you say causes chaos in the comparison shopping market. You also have a many sites that deal exclusively with "hot deals". Shopping by price is alive and well. There are plenty of shoppers that are not loyal to brands (e.g. your web store) and shop by the lowest price. This becomes more evident as lower and middle class customers have to stretch their dollars due to poor economic conditions.
