Pricing on the Internet: Part Three
Although price in the information age must be tied more closely to perceived
customer value than to actual production or distribution costs, I predict that
after the playing out of these online pricing war-games, we will see a return
to services bundling as determining customer value—particularly for products
with a greater range of variabilities.
There will be a return to pricing based on the more traditional values of
quality of service and vendor reliability; we may even see a return of some of
the traditional customer loyalty models that looked obsolete with the shift
away from brick-and-mortar—online, customers are just a click away from your
competitors!
But the net shopping phenomenon is still in the earliest cycles of its
maturation curve. In the near term, lowest price will continue to be king.
