There’s a fun story in Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence, that I think would be beneficial for many of us to hear.
In the book, Cialdini tells a story of a friend who owns a jewelry store. She was having difficulty selling some turquois jewelry. Upon leaving town, she instructed her assistant manager to mark them down 50%, just to get rid of them. But the assistant manager misread the note, and marked them up. She doubled the price.
To the owner’s surprise, all the jewelry sold!
(Sidebar, you can get the free audio version of this book for free when you do a 30-Day free trial membership of Audible. You should get two free audio books, and if you do, I also recommend Atomic Habits by James Clear.)
Okay, back to our story.
Why did it sell when the price increased?
Cialdini explains that we have certain scripts that our mind automatically plays. They serve us well normally. But sometimes, as in this case, they do not.
In this case, the script that ran in the customers’ minds was “Expensive = Better“
I’m sure that you’ve experienced this in your own life as well.
My wife and I have repeatedly run into this problem, and have adopted a saying, “You can pay on the front end, or pay on the back end.” This resulted from years of us being cheap, and buying the inexpensive models of whatever we needed, which ended up not working out and us having to repurchase after the cheap one breaks.
The book gives numerous examples of studies done to verify this programming. In one case subjects were given headache medicine. The candidates who believed they received a more expensive pill reported better results than those who thought they received a less expensive one. In reality, they had both received the same pill, they were just told different prices.
How does this affect us TpT Sellers?
Well, hopefully you’re recognizing that cheaper doesn’t equate as a better deal in the buyers’ minds.
I am guilty of this. I intentionally keep my products at a low price. But I don’t have the best conversion rates as a result.
Recently, I have been increasing the prices of many of my products. It has only been a short period of time since I did so – which means I have a very small sample size – but I’m already experiencing a higher conversion rate (it doubled). Higher conversions on more expensive items means more profit.
What about you?
What products do you have that are a high value but you’re price doesn’t reflect that?
I want to encourage you to take this challenge. Think about some of your products whose price could (or should) increase. And then raise it!