Carragee Consulting

10 Rules of Highly Effective Pricing Segmentation | Press & Seal | Crazy cat ladies

I decided to try and go screen free at chemo yesterday so I brought along my signed copy of Danilo Zatta’s new book “10 Rules of Highly Effective Pricing”.

The book frames the considerations of how to price well in many different business structures and industries with case studies but it also includes word etymologies, historical quotes and insightful reflections.

Naturally there is a chapter on Price Discrimination referencing the economist Pigou. The chapter addresses the topic from seemingly all angles including “the Pink Tax” that women pay for virtually the same products as men.

Reading it made me think about how I’ve done price segmentation analysis with coefficient of variation (aka Residual Standard Deviation) analysis and price distribution plots accompanied by market research.

Especially in high transaction volume environments with lots of price testing or negotiating you find a range of prices paid for the same items. Investigating who the customers are at the top end of the pay range you sometimes find they have different use cases for them items and inherently value them more (sometimes they are just infrequent buyers or suckers).

Switching gears to two examples —

1) In my own consumer life I recently bought Press & Seal food wrap to use on my own body to cover a glob of lidocaine cream applied over my drug delivery port where chemo is administered.

Apparently this is a common hack to save your clothes known by many patients and nurses.

Does the manufacturer Glad know it too? Are they considering selling pre-cut patches expressly for this purpose?

Seems like marketing the same product as a medical supply would command higher margins than for food prep.

2) Automatic toilet flushers
When I worked for a facility services and uniform rental company I was researching who uses auto-flushers and why? Germiphobes? Car dealerships? And apparently cat owners who have toilet trained their feline companions, but haven’t taught them to flush.

The value propositions for each of these user groups is so different.

Car dealerships realized buying decisions are often driven by women who see restrooms as a quality & reliability signal. If they smell bad because patrons don’t flush, sales will suffer.

Germiphobes who kick flush can damage plumbing and cause costly repairs.

Cat owners are the rare consumers of auto-flushers for the residential market.

This is all to say Zatta’s book is great and it’s connecting the dots on various topics for me. It’s an excellent follow up to his previous book the Pricing Model Revolution which I consider in the top 10 must reads of recent books in the field.