Pricing in Trust: Baseball Tix and Lessons to be Applied
July 6th, 2010 | Small Business | No Comments »This week I’m spending time back home in the lovely state of Minnesota. In addition to spending time at my parents’ lake place, I had the opportunity to visit the Minnesota Twins new baseball park. Because it is the first year in existence, tickets are hard to come by. In such situations, you ask yourself a question. Do I go to StubHub.com or do I buy from a scalper on the street.
Now the benefits from buying from a scalper is that you can be spontaneous, negotiate a bit, and also avoid paying any “service” fees tacked on by StubHub. So, with these advantages, why did i go with StubHub? One simply reason: trust.
A few years back, i thought i scored some great seats, only to learn that my tickets were fake. So from that point on, I’ve been pretty wary of scalpers — opting for the certainty of getting legit tickets (and paying more for that certainty). It seems that the same could be said for other businesses. Competing solely on price is a war of attrition. But if your service or site provides additional safety or features surrounding trust (or giving greater security that the shopper will get what he thinks he’s paying for), you can command a premium for identical goods.
I’m sue there were other business lessons to be drawn from my baseball experience, but after 4 beers, this was the most obvious one for me to conclude.
