Forum: Poser - OFFICIAL


Subject: Positive suggestions rather than negative complaints

FyreSpiryt opened this issue on Aug 30, 2002 ยท 43 posts


soulhuntre posted Mon, 02 September 2002 at 10:44 PM

"what was the default unit_sales figure used to compute the unit_price, since no one can "magically" determine how well the software was going to sell? How was this figure even determined, without enough knowledge to support it? And, how many times did the presumed unit_sales exceed/fall short of expectations?"

You make an educated guess. This is an extremely common business issue and some people (not me) are very good at it. You do research, you survey customers, you go with your gut and you look at your competitors. IN the case of an upgrade you look at your existing customers.

This is not specific to software, car companies launch new models based on estimated future sales and so on.

In answer to your last question, almost always :) The question is, what do you do to adjust? Will lowering the price increase sales (usually) but will it do it ENOUGH to have a net profit effect?

"Although, mathematically, your equation is sound, there are other factors that should be included (especially with multiple version relases [home, pro, server], volume pricing, etc), but it does give a perspective."

Of course there are. It is meant only as a rough model for discussion purposes. Pricing is an art as well as a science. You have to "know" the market and have a feel for it.

"Also, I would like to know how software companies can make a profit with "academic pricing" being, hypothetically, 33%-50% of retail pricing. The way I figure it, being a consumer, if you can sell it to X number of people at (Retail_price - Academic_Discount), then you should revamp your pricing scheme so that the cost is equitable on all fronts, not favoring better pricing for one group over another."

You don't make money on academic pricing generally - you don't LOSE money (the price is almost always enough to cover your cost on that unit) but you don't factor it in to profit.

Why do it then? Because what people use in school is usually what they recommend when they get out. Alternately, a lot of graduates who know "X" create a pressure on companies to use "X" so they have easy access to trained candidates.

This has a huge positive effect on your market share. Also, equitability is not a relevant factor.