What price point?

"We started to test the new Olay product at premium price points of $12.99 to $18.99 and got very different results,” he says. “At $12.99, there was a positive response and a reasonably good rate of purchase intent. But most who signaled a desire to buy at $12.99 were mass shoppers. Very few department store shoppers were interested at that price point. Basically, we were trading people up from within the channel. At $15.99, purchase intent dropped dramatically. At $18.99, it went back up again—way up. So, $12.99 was really good, $15.99 not so good, $18.99 great.”

The team learned that at $18.99, consumers were crossing over from prestige department and specialty stores to buy Olay in discount, drug, and grocery stores. That price point sent exactly the right message. For the department store shopper, the product was a great value but still credibly expensive. For the mass shopper, the premium price signified that the product must be considerably better than anything else on the shelf. In contrast, $15.99 was in no-man’s land—for a mass shopper, expensive without signaling differentiation, and for a prestige shopper, not expensive enough. These differences were quite fine; had the team not focused so carefully on building and applying robust tests for multiple price points, the findings might never have emerged."

Trechos retirados de "A New Way to Think" de Roger L. Martin.