Pricing

The idea that pricing should follow traditional rules that have persisted since the early retail ages (or at least “retail” as we know it since big department/box stores started to pop up) is quickly becoming antiquated. I think we are past the days where specific industries should price goods as a strict percentage markup against cost. An article I read today on TechCrunch agrees. Although, what I will say is that the themes it brings up does almost take pricing back to its most basic roots, which I think is great.

Think about the days when items were bartered (the most early form of ‘pricing’ as far as I’m concerned). Cows weren’t empirically worth 10 chickens, or vice versa. Cows were worth exactly what a peer or separate member of your “society” (I will use this term loosely – as I am trying to indicate a member of any group of people, be it a city, a town, a dwelling, or what have you) valued that cow. And, if they had an abundance of chickens, it probably meant that your cow was worth a lot more chickens to that individual than it may be to any other individual. Not a strict cost based on some pricing table that some dude in the village “pricing department” set.

In short, I love the article and think it raises great points about the real pricing dilemma in an Amazon/e-commerce economy. With the prevalence of mass amounts of venture funding, crowdsourcing of financing for new ideas/projects, and a general movement back towards consumerism, I think we will see a great evolution of pricing of all goods in the near term. And I’m very excited for that!

Til Next Time,

Michael