Pricing Research in Context

May 2nd, 2018
Michele Sims | Vice President, Research Management, TRC
Hero Image: Pricing Research in Context

My last blog about pricing research was still fresh in my mind when I read an excerpt of Craig LaBan’s recent online chat. LaBan is the Philadelphia Inquirer’s restaurant critic and offers insightful reviews and information for foodies in the region. I was intrigued by the discussion of how Federal Donuts charges different prices at the ballpark than in their stand-alone restaurant locations.

Our clients typically look for answers to how to price their products either alone or bundled. But I personally have yet to have a client ask me how to price a product differently based on the situation or context. There is good information to be had on this topic: in “Contextual Pricing: The Death of List Price and the New Market Reality” the authors point out that the pricing scheme for Coca Cola includes air temperature at the point of sale. But what tools are available to the market researcher for exploring situation-based pricing?

At its simplest level, we can ask consumers what they’d be willing to pay given a certain situation (such as in an airport or on an airplane). By using a monadic design in which similar groups of respondents are asked about a single price point, we can compare across the groups to see what the various “take-rates” would be.

Discrete choice could be employed to vary both the context and the pricing – in that way multiple situations could be tested along with multiple price points.

I’m not sure how Federal Donuts arrived at their pricing decision – it could very well be that the ballpark charges more rent and that factor alone determined their pricing. But when all other factors are equal, determining how much to charge can have important financial consequences.