The full title of this book by Steve Prescott is
“Pricing Strategies for Winners: The ultimate guide to pricing strategies and how to never sell cheap again“.
In my review at Amazon.co.uk, I gave the book a Four Stars rating. This means I consider it to be good to very good.
Here is my book review.
A great reminder that you can charge high prices if you commit to delivering high quality and great service
This book focuses on premium pricing. This means being the, or one of the highest priced suppliers in your market.
If you look at any market, you’ll see different businesses charging different prices. Cars, hotels and even something as everyday as bread have the same pattern. There’s a range of products from low price, low quality (low value) products through to high price, high quality (high value) product and service combinations.
According to this book, your aim is to be at the top of the pricing options and it’s a decision you can make if you have the confidence. Living up to a price is much nicer than having to scrimp and scrape to make products selling at low price points profitable. However, if you price high, you must follow up with a great product and service combination.
This book will make you think about what you’re doing and that has to be a good thing. It lost one star because a big part of the battle is believing that you or your product is worth it. I felt the book could have looked more deeply at this psychological issue and how you can get the confidence to try premium pricing.
I’d also have liked to see a discussion of the different options of pricing away from the general value for money line. Offering a price lower than the value provided should help you to gain market share although it risks retaliatory action from competitors. Alternatively, selling at a price above the value provided is a way to maximise short term profits from a market you intend to withdraw from.
When I talk to my clients about the value for money relationship, I also talk about how some customers are bounded in what they’ll consider in terms of price and value, either setting a minimum or maximum limit. For example, would you pay £250,000 for a Lamborghini, even if you could afford it or is there a maximum price that you’d pay for a car, no matter how much money you have? Alternatively, when you go to the supermarket, do you automatically reject the cheapest food because you have serious doubts about the quality?
I’d also have liked to see discussion of how to find out the essential purchase criteria customers need to see to be convinced to pay a higher price. It is very easy to add features to a product/service combination but the process adds costs and it’s wasted if the cost if higher than the extra price the customers are willing to pay. Pricing is very much a strategic issue that links into how you differentiate in the market.
None of these issues are mentioned or if they are, they are not given sufficient attention.
The book can be improved and become a much more thorough consideration of premium pricing. After all, the subtitle claims that it is the “ultimate guide”. 3 or 4 stars? I’ve gone for 4 stars because I think it will encourage you to think about your pricing options.
It is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.
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