That people will buy more expensive product because it's kind of a mark of quality.  Which is a kind of inverse way of saying, people don't buy cheap stuff because it's a mark of poor qualitty.

This kind of puts your average merchant wannabe like myself in something of a quandry.  I'd like to sell products really cheaply, to give good value at an affordable price.  But if I sell them cheap, will people actually buy them?

I kind of get it, I mean I buy a certain brand of Cola because cheaper ones tend to not taste good, so I associate the slightly higher price with quality.  The same applies to alot of real world products.

So the question is, is it more or less true?

And if so how can you sell at a low price, in an attempt to give good value and actually encourage people to buy stuff?  Because if they don't buy stuff, teh whole exercise is a bit of a waste of time.

John :)

Then there are people like me who refuse to buy anything at all, except as a possible last resort!  Better to adapt a freebie and save the money for something really important, such as retreading the tires on the family car!
dph

It takes a while to know what vendors are good at what they sell, for as you say a cheap price - i dont go for expensive products, i am pretty cheap lol, i tend to wait for the sales, cause i like more bang for my buck ....
Low priced items can be of good quality just like it can be of the opposite. and high priced items tend to do the same ....
It just takes time and hate to say it, prove that your a vendor that provides quality in your products for a low price .... customer feedback is vital in this i think, and the same buyers that come back for more.

Just how cheaply are you planning on going? $5 is the min price here at Rendo.

Cheap doesn't always mean rubbish, I recently picked up a brilliant set of models (with textures, lights, cameras) for $5, it's absolutely huge & looks really good, easily worth 4 times what I paid for it.

Subject to my budget for these things, I would buy what I think is worth the going price, be it full-price or discounted.  

Free is always welcome, but not all freebies are useable.  

As a hobbyist, I am very happy with the product price range for Poser items, at this time.

Quote - Then there are people like me who refuse to buy anything at all, except as a possible last resort!  Better to adapt a freebie and save the money for something really important, such as retreading the tires on the family car!
dph

I appreciate your standpoint DP.  I don't buy much myself, except for the odd model and texture resources :)

John

Quote - It takes a while to know what vendors are good at what they sell, for as you say a cheap price - i dont go for expensive products, i am pretty cheap lol, i tend to wait for the sales, cause i like more bang for my buck ....
Low priced items can be of good quality just like it can be of the opposite. and high priced items tend to do the same ....
It just takes time and hate to say it, prove that your a vendor that provides quality in your products for a low price .... customer feedback is vital in this i think, and the same buyers that come back for more.

Just how cheaply are you planning on going? $5 is the min price here at Rendo.

I realise that the price itself doesn't actually reflect in quality, not all the time anyway.  I would certainly use the minimum rendo price of $5, then maybe the occasional bigger bundle for a little more.

John

Quote - Cheap doesn't always mean rubbish, I recently picked up a brilliant set of models (with textures, lights, cameras) for $5, it's absolutely huge & looks really good, easily worth 4 times what I paid for it.

You lucky fellow :)

Quote - Subject to my budget for these things, I would buy what I think is worth the going price, be it full-price or discounted.  

Free is always welcome, but not all freebies are useable.  

As a hobbyist, I am very happy with the product price range for Poser items, at this time.

Seems like a nicely balanced approach :)

StaceyG has moved this thread from the Community Center forum to the Poser forum as of Friday, May 14, 2010 1:54 pm.

There are marketing specialists who spend their lives working on the psychology of pricing. It's not an insignificant question.

The easiest solution would seem to be to assign a quality price -- for the psychological benefit -- and put your items on sale.

I don't know what the policy here is on sale prices. Some items here seem to on permanent sale, which actually annoyed me recently, as I bought an item just before the sale was about to expire, only to see it extended the next day. But I still bought the item. So it was a strategy that clearly worked.

John, I'm almost tempted to say that you have quite a tremendous amount of free time on your hands.  I don't agree with the more pricey the product, the better it necessarily is mentality.  A vendor bases his/her reputation on quality and how much bang for the buck can be delivered at a reasonable price.  Like many us struggling under a bad economy, we will look for bargains and freebies first.  But, if we stumble across a particular vendor whose quality and workmanship really impresses us, we will be more inclined to scrutinize those products closely, with serious consideration.  

However, the Poser world is caught in a very unusual situation.  There are various iterations still in use which presents a problem for vendors providing content to satisfy all consumers.  Poser 4 users want to keep it simple, but Poser 8 users expect to see procedural shaders and gamma correction.  Will this determine the final cost of content or dilute the quality to appease the masses.

I, myself, will take the content and make the necessary changes to suite my needs.  But the novice have neither the expertise nor the experience to accomplish that end.  As long as the content is not a complete disaster, I would like to save money whenever I can.  

Having worked retail for umpteen years, I've learned you can sell a lot of something cheap, or a few of something expensive, and wind up with the same amount of profit. Since digital models can be endlessly duplicated without incurring any measurable additional cost, it would make sense to keep the price low. suit-speak

If I see most characters selling around $10 (arbitrary number), and then see one for $2.50, I'd wonder what was wrong with it. If I saw one for $50, I'd think someone was crazy. An exception would be for a vendor who has established himself as exceptional in a particular niche. People are willing to pay more for, say, Stonemason's products.

Basically, pricing your items close to the average price for whatever it is, is a safe way to go.

Quote - That people will buy more expensive product because it's kind of a mark of quality.  Which is a kind of inverse way of saying, people don't buy cheap stuff because it's a mark of poor qualitty.

John :)

Yeah in the business world great products sometimes have to be overpriced for the sole reason that people won't buy them at any less.  Basically they think low price means low value.  Which is kinda dumb to always think like that, but sometimes you really do get what you pay for. 

Don't know much on the subject, but it seems that you would price your product based on your standards of 1. Does my product achieve the look I wanted? 2. Does my product function the way it was meant to? 3. If created by someone else, how much would I be willing to pay? These are hard questions to answer as everyone has different opinions on how much their time, effort and skills are worth. I however do wish you all the best on this.

Quote -
If I see most characters selling around $10 (arbitrary number), and then see one for $2.50, I'd wonder what was wrong with it. If I saw one for $50, I'd think someone was crazy. 

That's my feelings as well. I tried pricing some of my products both a little higher and a little lower than my average. Neither brought more sales (they sold ok but not like mad)

But I've noticed that the age-old "...and 99 cents" DOES work... I fall for it myself, thinking for example $10 is expensive  while $9.99 sounds a lot cheaper LOL

Not so long ago I brwsed the links on rendo home page and came across a site offerng 3D models. They were priced in the hundreds of USD - wow - who on earth buys them?

Apple, those working for companies with budgets for it.  If you can convince the boss you need a particular object, and you need it yesterday, they usually say yes. Pay $200 for a finished object, or pay your employee overtime to make it. Even I'll admit I've seen some models well worth the money: they're that good.

Having only brought one product to market, my experience is limited... however...

It sold like crazy the first week when I had it on sale (20%) off. At the regular price of $8.95 the sales are at a snail's pace.

I suspect the "being on sale" is a bigger draw than a regular low price.

Retail stores have known this for over a century! 

No, that's just normal I think.  Items that are new sell, those that aren't don't.

That could also be in part due to how hard it is to find (specific) older stuff here in the store. Do a search for V3 - oh look, there's a ton of: V4, V2, Millenium Girls, etc items. Not items that are cross-compatible, mind you; the false positives are, almost without exception, only made for the figure they were designed for, and have simply been miscategorized. There's also the age-old "texture set" versus "character", and several other problems. There are also many substandard products that make it even more of a chore trying to find anything (or, what I affectionately refer to as "cat-face-goose-head-mannequin-V2/V3 characters).

So, to paraphrase you:

Items that are new sell, those that aren't can't be found easily, and therefor don't sell.

Marketing is an odd, illogical, unpredictable beast. Item is regular price $1.59. Put it on sale for 99¢, it sells a little bit better. Put it on sale for 10 for $10.00, and it flies off the shelf. Discontinue the product, put it in a clearance bin, price it  $1.09, and it disappears overnight.

Disney is brilliant with this. Make films unavailable, then bring them out for a limited time, and suddenly everyone wants an ancient movie they've seen a dozen times.

The comic strip Peanuts uses the opposite strategy: produce hundreds of thousands of small items every year. The rights to do this just sold for $175 million.

A low price will make me wonder whether there is something wrong with the product as someone else pointed out. However, this is not an issue if there is sufficient information to determine whether or not the product meets my expectations. Quite often this is unfortunately not the case.

And of course an unconditional refund policy does away with such concerns entirely ;-)

My favorite merchants sell very cheap and are held in high estime and do great volume as far as I can tell: Reika, Kobamax, 9mbi, BatLab, BVH, 3Dream in the old days. On the other hand David's work and Osskarson's for instance are great but I have only been able to buy a little of either because of the prices. I am disabled (yada yada) and my discretionary spending for Poser content is very low. Sub-$10.

Often very good products end up in Clearance at RPM only because of high pricing as far as I can tell but the quality stuff at $5-$7.50 seems to sell very well and stay in stock perennially. All my vendor income now comes from a single $5 product I put in the RMP ten years ago which still sells about a half dozen a month while my costlier stuff has slipped out of Clearance in the last couple years. At one time I generated about $600+ a month with just a few Poser products priced $5-$7.50 here and at another store but that was some time ago.

I say try for volume.