1. Create a visual perception of luxury
If you walked into a Bonds clearance warehouse and saw that the average price was $100 you’d walk out. If you walked into Gloria Jeans and saw the average slice of cake was $12 you’d walk out.
Its hard to sell expensive products in environments that feel cheap or perfunctory.
Existing luxury brands sensibly spend the money to ensure their online platform doesn’t disappoint. But crafting a sense of luxury on their site is even more important for new brands. For example Loose Button - a subscription service for makeup and fragrance samples have to look luxurious, otherwise why would you spend money on something you can get for free at the pharmacy makeup section.
Enveloping your user in luxury throughout their experience makes paying for the indulgence more palatable.
2. Place a more expensive product right beside it
If you want to make a car look big, place a bicycle beside it.
If you want to make a car look small, place a train beside it.
That’s the contrast effect at play, and this will work wonders at positioning your prices. Just make the price of the product you want to sell appear reasonable by positioning a similar but more expensive product next to it.
A classic study published in the Journal of Marketing Research proved that by placing a similar product at nearly double the price beside the product you wish to sell can almost double your sales of the cheaper product.
So perhaps bring into your store a brand that you believe is too expensive for your market. The goal is not to sell the new expensive product (although you might) but to make the price of your original product look small so you sell more of them.
Always lead with the more expensive product.
3. Increase the perception of value within your product.
There’s a copywriting technique called the ‘value prism’. The idea is to dazzle people with everything that went into creating it. Make them see the previously unseen value at its core, so that your product fells much more valuable and your price more reasonable. Just list everything that went into creating your product.
Most of the luxury brands intermittently push a ‘craftmanship’ campaign onto the public. Well you too can do this on a small scale.
4. Remove the dollar sign ($) from your products.
Studies have shown diners are more likely to spend more when the dollar sign is removed from the menu.
Neiman Marcus doesn’t use dollar signs when trying to sell their pricey items.
Another study found that a sale price is more palatable when its written in a small typeface.
Prices that are physically large may create the perception of being more. And vice versa which is where we’re coming from.
And don’t forget the power of subtracting just 1 dollar – because $199 just doesn’t seem to break that $200 barrier. Even better sounds $197, which really justifies not breaking the $200 barrier.
5. Make it seem everyone is cool with your prices.
The best way to normalise spending $499 on a dress is to social proof it. use testimonials, ratings, and number of users when writing your copy. This can go along way to making price concerns seem foolish. After all if 1,000 people are buying these products and they don’t think its too expensive…
