I was in a Board meeting last week (not Return Path’s), when one of my fellow directors came out with this gem: “No one will ever thank us for keeping our prices low.” When I first heard this, as is the case with most great quotes, I was drawn to its wit and simplicity. But then I started thinking – is it true? My mind first went to retail. Having a reputation as being a low-cost provider can be in and of itself effective marketing – if that reputation is strong enough and your selection is wide enough, at least in retail-oriented industries, customers may consistently buy from you even if you’re not ALWAYS the low-cost provider. Wal-Mart and Amazon…
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pricing
Keeping It All In Sync?
Keeping It All In Sync? I just read a great quote in a non-business book, Richard Dawkins’ River out of Eden, Dawkins himself quoting Darwinian psychologist Nicholas Humphrey’s revolting of a likely apocryphal story about Henry Ford. The full “double” quote is: It is said that Ford, the patron saint of manufacturing efficiency, once commissioned a survey of the car scrapyards in America to find out if there were parts of the Model T Fird which never failed. His inspectors came back with reports of almost every kind of breakdown: axles, brakes, pistons — all were liable to go wrong. But they drew attention to one notable exception, the kingpins of the scrapped cars invariably had years of life left…