Lead:

The so-called "price discrimination" refers to selling the exact same product or providing the exact same service, but charging different prices to different consumers. To put it bluntly, it is the same thing that is sold for different prices for different people. This kind of behavior may seem very unreasonable on the surface, but when used properly, it can increase profits for merchants and satisfy consumers.

Once, Ms. Li spent 2,000 yuan to buy the latest fashion mobile phone, which she loved like a treasure and played with it whenever she was free. In order to buy this mobile phone, she spent a whole day running to mobile phone stores in most of the city, picking and choosing, comparing repeatedly, and finally made herself satisfied, the price is low, and the style and function are good.

But Ms. Liu went to a friend's house, and her previous joy disappeared without a trace. Because her friend recently bought the same mobile phone, it cost 1,200 yuan, and she also gave 15 yuan per month for 20 months, which is equivalent to only 900 yuan for the mobile phone!

It turned out that Ms. Li's friend's son went to college this year, and the mobile phone was used in their school to help students, and as long as you buy it with your student ID, you can enjoy such a discount. Although Ms. Liu's friend's son bought a new mobile phone before going to school, he didn't want to miss the opportunity, so he bought a mobile phone for his mother.

Why is there such a big difference in the price of the same mobile phone on campus and in the mall? Is it really the merciful business that carries out student assistance activities? The nature of the enterprise is to make profits, and it is the pursuit of profit maximization. The above phenomenon is a price strategy of enterprises in order to expand the market and increase profits.

This pricing strategy is called "price discrimination" in economics, in which the exact same product or service is sold and different prices are charged to different consumers. To put it bluntly, it is the same thing that is sold for different prices for different people. At first glance, it's really a bit puzzling, isn't this obviously watching people cook? That's right, the merchant is watching people serve the food, which seems very unreasonable on the surface, but as long as it is used properly, it can achieve the effect of increasing profits and consumer satisfaction.

Let's still analyze it by selling mobile phones. The price of mobile phones determines the demand for students in the student market, if the price is too high, most students will choose to use low-end machines, so that businesses will lose a lot of market. Therefore, the price given by the merchant to the student is extremely low, so it seems to sell to the student at the cost price or even less than the cost price, but it has gained more users, and in fact, the merchant can still make a profit. As long as you buy a mobile phone, you will have to make phone calls and incur phone bills, and the monthly phone bill will not be a small amount.

In addition, the merchant has also implemented some auxiliary strategies, such as giving away monthly phone bills, to motivate you to make more calls. In this way, not only do merchants expand their markets and increase their profits, but students also benefit from it. For people in society like Ms. Li, the elasticity of demand for mobile phones is relatively small, and it is extremely inconvenient for modern society to work and communicate without mobile phones, and business people have higher requirements for the functions of mobile phones, so although the price is higher, you will still buy it. Therefore, merchants will practice "price discrimination" between these two types of consumers in order to win a larger market share and obtain greater profits.

There are many examples of "price discrimination" in daily life. In the past, parks sold tickets, and some places sold low prices for those with local ID cards, and high prices for tourists from other places; On the bus, regular passengers who buy monthly passes do not spend the same amount of money as occasional passengers; Air tickets, sold at discounts for students and teachers during winter and summer vacations, as long as you have a student ID and a job as a teacher; Those who sell computers are cheaper to sell to college students than to those who work in companies; For electricity, the price of industrial and commercial enterprises is different from that of ordinary people, and the peak and valley electricity prices are also different during the day and late at night; Movie tickets, generally for children and teenagers to implement "half ticket", watching the same movie, holiday audiences also pay more than the usual audience to buy tickets; Some dance halls allow dancers to pair up while dancing, or even sell tickets only to men, while women can do it completely free.

According to the psychological law of ordinary people, those who get cheap do not feel particularly happy, and those who have more money will feel very disadvantaged, so as consumers, people generally oppose the "price discrimination" of merchants and demand fair treatment.

But "price discrimination" is good for merchants, and whenever possible, he has to implement a "price discrimination" pricing strategy. The reason why it is good for him is that every consumer has a different price elasticity of demand, as long as the business can effectively divide them in the market, such as the male market and the female market determined by gender, the elderly market, the middle-aged market, and the juvenile market determined by age, and the white-collar market, military market, and student market determined by occupation, etc., you can use different marketing strategies and implement price discrimination for different markets, and you can "capture" more customers. It can wipe out all the customers of each layer, so as to obtain the maximum possible profit.

The ultimate in "price discrimination" is the practice of "complete differential pricing", which is suitable for those who provide one-to-one services, such as lawyers and doctors, because their services are separated from each other, and their customers are also different.

Of course, the premise of the merchant's ability to do this is that he can accurately "identify" the customer. Therefore, when a doctor who practices medicine independently sees a patient at his home, he always asks questions, such as, "Do you usually go to restaurants for dinner?" "What do you drink regularly?" "Do you do fitness regularly? Do you travel a lot? Don't think that he is just concerned about your diet and daily life, in fact, he is still "scouting" your financial strength in order to justify his "price discrimination" when quoting. It seems that the implementation of price discrimination by merchants must reasonably distinguish the actual situation of the market you are facing, and price according to the external performance of the market you are facing, so as to better expand economic benefits.

After the emergence of the target consumer group, according to the demand characteristics of this group and the sensitivity of their product prices, the strategy of "price discrimination" is used to find a reasonable price level, so as to maximize the total profit.