Smart Pricing

Broadens your perspective on pricing; not a how-to

This book broadened my thinking about pricing strategies by dedicated one chapter to an alternative pricing method (alternative to cost plus pricing). One of the authors' key points is that pricing does not arise from the "invisible hand of the market" but is a deliberate choice on the part of a business owner. They also point out that a good pricing strategy is aligned with the type of customer you are serving.The book is really a set of separate chapters dedicated to nine pricing methods (e.g., freemium, pay as you wish, premium pricing, price wars), and doesn't really have a summary or culminating insight other than the two mentioned previously. This book is not a "how to" so it won't help you devise a pricing strategy for your business; rather, it will help you "think outside the box" in terms of what is possible and what other people have made work for their businesses. The narrator is pretty good and engaging.

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

Breaks your mindset

This book is book of simple ideas. It makes you think about multiple pricing strategies. It also explains why some pricing methods work and why others don't.

I am not a pricing expert, but having worked with many businesses, I now see how wrong some of their pricing strategies are. Who would believe that a price war can be good for your long term business, or increasing your prices could make your goods more valuable and your business more profitable for the long term. It happens all the time and your business might just benefit.

This book is ideal for people who want to learn about pricing and/or get you to think about how your product should be priced.

This was a great buy for me who knew nothing about pricing. But this book confirmed to me some of my gut feelings I had about pricing and gave me more confidence in how to use pricing in the future.

5 out of 5

5 of 6 people found this review helpful

Amazing but..

The book is truly magnificent but if you are trying to find something here that would fit to your own business (like I was doing) you might get a bit frustrated. Most of the pricing strategies apply only to a narrow niche

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Fantastic content...poor narration

I can't say enough about how valuable this book is from a content perspective. However, the narration really needs some work. The narrator's voice is great, but he reads it in a halting robotic fashion. Many times there are long pauses mid-sentence that makes one believe the sentence or thought is complete. This really gets in the way of the true meaning of the sentence. I'm not referring to comma or semi-colon pauses, but pauses that occur at other times. I am not trying to be too critical, but it definitely takes away from the listening experience. However, the audiobook is still worth buying despite the narration issues.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

ok just ok

love all of the examples. thought it was going to get into a little more details.

great book

Has great pricing strategies, when to use them, with what type of products, how to compete against them. it is very well explained, easy to digest and it uses cases. The only thing is that you can tell us that it needs a little update.

Pricing Practitioners Avoid

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

Starting the book with anecdotes of nontraditional pricing strategies stumbling into success seems to push a social cause rather than arm pricing practitioners. As a pricing practitioner, I would be laughed at if I recommend a "pay what you'd like" strategy, or recommend we deliberately start a price war - and for good reason. These are outlier pricing strategies (I struggle to call them strategies) that deter the task of communicating a transactions value through price. I'd recommend starting the book with examples of more common pricing strategies done right. I stopped listening when the author applauded a pricing strategy of a Boston firm's flagship store that could not replicate its pricing strategy in other markets and (I infer) eventually led to its bankruptcy. Practitioners are better left with this one piece of advice - price higher.

A book of case studies

This isn’t really a book about pricing strategy. It just lists historical case studies and explains why they worked. Most of the case studies are fairly edge case examples though, so the usefulness in comparison to your own business is probably limited.

Practical advice for business leaders

I read this book every time I face a new pricing decision. The mix of theory and real life examples makes this a very useful read for business and product owners. Nagle's book on pricing continues to be my favorite, I believe this is an excellent supplement.

Ok book, really bad narration

Author only talks about existing pricing structure/models of different products. Does not shed any guidance in how to form pricing for your own product.