Two Constants for Retailers’ Pricing Strategies

Alan Perlis, the first head of the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University, often told his students that "one man's constant is another man's variable." Pricing is one area in which understanding how constants can become variables can help businesses be successful.

The first pricing constant is that price is always on the table. Every customer in every purchase setting is aware of price. It's always one of the factors that enters into their decision. If other factors such as product attributes, service and location are seen as equal, price becomes the factor. We can all cite a few examples we've observed where that wasn't true, but most of them fall into the realm of "you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time."