The following list of suggestions are individual considerations for businesses seeking to increase their prices without losing their customers, unless they mean too. There are some customers that would be best to jettison in an inflationary environment as they may cost you too much in terms of resources, mindshare, and distraction.
Add value and value price (e.g., price for a portion of the value created).
Add value and increase your cost-basis prices (e.g., add more value and incrementally increase prices).
Increase pricing on remaining units when costs are covered (e.g., pricing of airline seats, cheap at first, and then escalating upwards in price as open seats become scarce).
Incrementally increase utility-demand pricing (e.g. first scoop of ice cream $3, 2nd scoop $2.5 dollars, 3rd scoop $2 dollars).
Geographically increase pricing based on location proximity and ease (e.g., sell higher priced gasoline near the airport rental car return center; sell higher-priced seats with more space and comfort at the front of the plane in First Class and lower priced seats at the rear with smaller seats in economy; sell higher priced t-shirts at the bottom of the mountain, and lower-priced t-shirts higher up the mountain).
Premium price if you are truly offering a premium product or service that is of limited supply or availability (e.g., inelastic demand curve).
Economy price and sell more of a product more affordably if lower prices create more sales (i.e., elastic demand curve).
Implement cost-plus-fee pricing.
Implement cost-plus-fee-plus-COLA pricing.
Add a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) clause to your contracts.
Increase prices by adding fees (e.g., management, packaging, delivery, PITA, HPMO, etc).
Increase prices by adding surcharges for direct costs (e.g, utilities, fuel or transportation).
Increase prices by reducing unit count, size, or volume.
Increase prices by bundling (e.g., create larger lots with smaller unit sizes, replace 24 x 20 oz bottles (= 480 oz of water) with 28 x 16 oz = 448 oz of water = 32 oz reduction in volume or -6.6%.
Keep legacy customers at present level and increase prices on new customers.
Increase prices on change orders.
Increase prices on some units but not all (choosing to price commodities low and unique products and services higher).
Create a range of pricing to capture the utility and pricing appetite of your customer; for example, raise prices on your premium item, and then offer a lower priced (yet profitable) alternative; another method is the popular use of medal-level pricing to maximize revenue per customer type: e.g., bronze, silver, gold, and platinum.
Use the cover of the herd to raise prices at a time when everyone else is raising prices.
Understand the psychology of pricing that $400 is materially the same as $398.99, yet the later seems much less expensive to buyers.
Identify the customers that are costing you the most to service, support, and care for in terms of cost, mindshare, and distraction; raise prices much higher on the challenging clients, and they may leave you, or you will get paid more for the challenges of supporting them.
PEG contracts with a foreign currency or basket of currencies.
Strategic discounting for volume purchases, that encourage greater participation of the customer with your firm; e.g., discount for maintaining a higher threshold of business; discount for subscription business (e.g., 6 month or annual plans, etc).
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