
Make no mistake, price is a very, very important part of your product. There have been numerous experiments about the affect our expectations have on real outcomes and it is very applicable here. What is the expectation for value your price is setting? If I attend a free class on marketing my expectation for results is not as high as it would be if I spent $2000 dollars and there is no loss to me if I don’t put it to work. On the other hand if I do spend the $2000 dollars for that same class I am more likely to make sure there are results that come from it so that I don’t waste my investment. It is a good exercise to ask yourself if the price expectation of your product is reaching the customer you want to serve? Remember, the higher up the value chain you go the more creative you can become with actual product features because you hopefully have the added profits to work with. People do expect more and pay more for brand name products than for generic brand products even when some of the generic products are manufactured by big brand manufacturers. Getting higher prices for my services will actually affect my quality because it enables me to spend the time to be more attentive to the customers’ needs and pay attention to details. (Operative word being pay because attention does have a cost.) So, price can actually influence quality from the production side as well.
Next time you want to create new innovative value in your product spend some time discovering how pricing can become a product feature rather than a necessary evil.