Price vs. Value, or both?

Had this discussion at our last Hawaii Photographer's meeting on Tuesday night.  Today, I stumbled upon this article from Author Seth Godin viewing our friend JSandifers Blog.  This article sums up my thoughts, and our recent discussion exactly.

Two halves of the value fraction

By Seth Godin

In a down economy, marketers fret a lot about price. We think that since times are tough, people care about price and nothing but price.

Of course, people actually care more about value. They care about value more than they used to because they can’t afford to overpay, they don’t want to make a mistake with their money.

Value = benefit/price. That means that one way to make value go up is to lower price, right?

The thing is, there’s another way to make the value go up. Increase what you give. Increase quality and quantity and the unmeasurable pieces that bring confidence and joy to an interaction.

When all of your competitors are busy increasing value by cutting prices, you can actually increase market share by increasing value and raising benefits.

Over the past six months, our studio has increased focus on our customer service and quality products to our clients.  We feel that providing our clients with a even higher quality of Service and products has been the catalyst to our studio's continued growth during this down economy.

A note to photographer's feeling the pressures of the failing economy. Stop playing the pricing game! This only devalues your services, and your livelihood. Take actions to start providing amazing customer service, and the best quality/Value for your clients!  

You owe it to yourself to be paid for your talent, Your clients deserve to have the best Service/Quality/Value your business can provide.

Mike

Comments

[J Sandifer]

Hey Mike,
Hope you are doing well bud...I find that Seth is always summing up my thoughts.

You are correct, businesses that compete on price are going to have a hard time! There will always be someone entering the market that is willing to do it cheaper. So you can as you say up your game with customer service or take your photos and work to the next level!

Need to book a Maui wedding :) Have a few this year in Costa Rica...almost there!