Live webinar on Improve Market Reactivity with Dynamic Pricing endorsed by EPP

In this 30-minute webinar featuring a live demo, Jan-Willem Adrian will run through a daily operational pricing process in a retail company selling online and in stores.

Willem will demonstrate how pricing analysts and category managers can maketimely and optimal pricing decisions, overcoming the limitations of Excel ‘spreadmarts’ and black-box pricing applications.

You’ll learn:

• How to accelerate pricing decisions and deploy new prices several times per week
• How to improve the performance of your pricing rules, whilst ensuring consistency across channels and regions
• How to generate smart recommendations based on inventory levels, competitors prices, web traffic and more variables
• How to run “what-if“ simulations to evaluate the impact of multiple price adjustment scenarios on margins

1. Live webinar on Tuesday, May 19, 2015 3:00 PM - 3:30 PM CEST
2. During the live 30-minute webinar, you will learn how retail companies can make timely and optimal 
3. pricing decisions that improve market reactivity, generate margins and optimize stocks,
4. overcoming the limitations of Excel spreadmarts and black-box pricing applications.
5. Interested to attend? Please click here.

10 Historical Pricing Milestones

Disney pricing strategy: Seeking more profits out of long-term visitors

Six years after Walt Disney World radically redesigned its ticket prices to steer guests toward longer stays, the resort is now aiming to wring more money out of passes once priced as irresistibly cheap.

During the past 10 months, the giant resort has begun increasing the premium it charges for longer ticket options — its five-, six- and seven-day passes — relative to the resort's single-day and shorter-term tickets.

It is a shift from the strategy behind Disney World's "Magic Your Way," the revamped pricing structure that Disney introduced at the start of 2005. That pricing scheme was designed to persuade travelers to make repeat visits to Disney World's four theme parks during their vacations by making the added cost for extra visits negligible — particularly when compared with the price of a one-day ticket charged by competitors Universal Orlando and SeaWorld Orlando.

The effect is subtle but significant. For nearly six years, even as it consistently raised its base ticket prices, Disney kept the added charge for upgrading from a five-day ticket to a six-day ticket — the point at which a traveler may be debating whether to visit a Disney theme park for a second time or visit Universal's Islands of Adventure for the first time — to no more than $3.But last summer, Disney raised that premium to $5. And this month, the resort boosted it further, to $8. That works out to a 167 percent increase in less than a year.The charge to add a seventh day has also jumped from $3 to $8 during the same period.Starting with the first adjustment to Magic Your Way in 2006, the difference between a four-day and a five-day pass also remained relatively constant — at $3 or $4 — until last year.


But it, too, has now jumped to $8.The figures are based on an Orlando Sentinel analysis of historical price data compiled by AllEars.net, a consumer website for Disney vacationers.Disney declined to discuss its pricing strategy. But other experts called the company's changes shrewd.With Magic Your Way prices now well-established, Disney appears to have successfully conditioned customers to seek out longer passes. Four-, five- and seven-day tickets are Disney World's most popular passes, according to industry analysts and former theme-park officials. Concentrating price increases on those ticket options now gives Disney the most revenue bang for its buck.In addition, "you assume that folks who are down [in Orlando] over a longer time frame are both more price elastic and dedicated to Disney," said Michael Nathanson, a stock analyst who follows theWalt Disney Co. for Nomura Securities.Focusing on its longer passes also allows Disney to ease off on the price increases for its basic, single-day tickets, which are rapidly approaching $100 — potentially a psychologically significant threshold. Although single-day tickets account for only a small percentage of Disney's total ticket sales, they are a widely used barometer of the industry's pricing overall and can affect travelers' perception of theme parks' affordability.


Disney World has made seven rounds of price increases since beginning Magic Your Way. During each of the first five, single-day prices rose by an average of 5.7 percent. But during the past two, they have climbed an average of only 3.8 percent. One-day prices are now at $85 before tax.Experts say Disney likely has other motivations for the shift, as well. Company executives are under pressure to boost theme-park profit margins, which shriveled during the global recession as Disney used steep discounts to continue luring travelers to its resorts.Lifting prices for the later days of Magic Your Way passes is an obvious target."If ticket prices are almost giving [the] park away beyond the four- or five-day products, at some point the financial model may not work," said Joseph Couceiro, a former chief marketing officer for SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment.There is a limit to how much Disney can squeeze out of such increases without undermining the overarching goal of Magic Your Way. 


The ticket structure was designed, after all, to make it a no-brainer for guests to add extra days to their Disney passes rather than go somewhere else.Raising prices for those additional days could threaten that consumer calculus — just as Disney faces stiffening competition from other parks, particularly Universal with its year-old Wizarding World of Harry Potter."You have to walk gingerly to see how far you can reasonably push the envelope before you get consumer pushback," Couceiro said.For now, though, $8 for an extra day at Disney remains a tiny fraction of the one-day entry price to Universal or SeaWorld. And it's possible those other parks could face financial pressure of their own if Disney continues concentrating its price increases on its longer passes.Like Disney, both of the smaller parks have reshaped ticket prices in recent years to encourage multiple visits. Universal just last year launched a new price structure modeled after Magic Your Way, while SeaWorld has expanded multi-day ticket options with the opening of Aquatica, its 3-year-old water park.


But sales of single-day tickets remain a far more important revenue source for the smaller parks than for Disney. So if Disney makes only modest increases to its single-day ticket price — or even opts to hold it steady — it could put a disproportionate squeeze on Universal and SeaWorld, which typically match Disney's one-day price.Representatives for Universal and SeaWorld declined to comment on Disney's pricing strategy.

Publisher:  Orlando Sentinel

Ticketmaster Aims to Fill Theaters with Dynamic Pricing

Ticketmaster's CEO Nathan Hubbard knows he's got a major problem. Ticket sales were down by double digits, and 40 percent of seats went unsold last year.

Now, he has a solution, one he unveiled on CNBC's "Power Lunch" today. It's 'dynamic' ticket pricing, a technology developed with a company called MarketShare.

Instead of locking in a single price for tickets, the company is rolling out an approach similar to the airline industry's strategy to make every seat on the plane is full. The new variable pricing system will let artists and sports teams raise and lower ticket prices to reflect demand, while they're being sold.

If this strategy works, more of the seats that have been sitting empty will sell and promoters will be able to drop prices if they're not selling. If ticket prices more accurately represent their value to consumers, that could mean fewer tickets being sold at sky-high prices on the secondary market.

If tickets for a particular sporting event or concert are selling like hotcakes, the band or team can raise ticket prices—preventing them from selling for sky-high prices on Stubhub later.

And perhaps most importantly, it could mean consumers are more satisfied and less frustrated. And since Ticketmaster is a brand consumers love to hate, it could use the help!

Hubbard, a former musician himself, has been working on a number of key initiatives to make consumers happier and drive ticket sales. One tactic is to make ticket-buying social. Hubbard has integrated Ticketmaster into Facebook, so buyers can tell friends they've bought tickets to an event.

This helps spread the word—free marketing—and gets groups of friends to mobilize. Another strategy is interactive seat maps.

Now Ticketmasters gives consumers far more control over choosing seats in an auditorium.

And it's working. The conversion rates—number of people who actually buy seats after looking at them—has grown by over 25 percent.

Consumers will never want to pay fees for tickets, the question is whether Ticketmaster can be upfront about those fees, and make ticket pricing fair enough that it can keep music and sports fans from jumping ship to the competition.

And there's plenty of competition to go around: a range of companies are trying to take a bite out of Ticketmaster's business, from AEG, to Ticketfly, to a new startup Brown Paper Tickets. But Hubbard seems to get the threat these companies pose, and is trying to turn Ticketmaster into a kinder, gentler brand.

Source: 

By: Julia Boorstin

CNBC Correspondent

Dynamic admission prices prevent extreme busy days

Hours in the queue for the rollercoaster or an other wild ride? Who doesn't know about it? Especially in the summer day-trippers storm to theme parks to eventually wait a really long time in the line to experience a ride. To avoide these extreme busy day, theme park Slagharen (the Netherlands) introduces flexible admission prices.

Going to a theme park on a calm day is, because of the admission prices, a lot cheaper than on the busy days. At 'Slagharen' the prices vary from €12.50 to €24.50. On the special actiondays, the customers get an ever cheaper admission price of €5.

The operations manager explains how it works: 'Our website is a summary of different colors for quiet and busy days. This changes constantly by the number of reservations and the number of days prior to arrival. How earlier you buy the tickets, the more favorable the price is. A reservation made by the given price is fixed. The schedule changes nothing about this price.

'Slagharen' is the first theme park in the Netherlands that introduces flexibel prices. Other industries like airline companies already use such systems.

'Dynamische toegangsprijzen voorkomen extreem drukke dagen'

Uren lang in de rij voor de achtbaan of een andere attractie; wie kent het niet? Vooral in de zomermaanden bestormen dagjesmensen de Nederlandse pretparken, om vervolgens na een ellenlange file aan te sluiten in de rij voor een attractie. Om extreem drukke dagen te voorkomen voert attractiepark Slagharen flexibele entreeprijzen in.

Op een rustige dag naar een attractiepark gaan, is door de flexibele toegangsprijzen een stuk goedkoper dan op een drukke dag. In Slagharen variëren de prijzen van 12,50 euro tot 24,50 euro. Op de speciale actiedagen zijn bezoekers nog een stuk goedkoper uit en mogen ze voor 5 euro naar binnen. Wie wil profiteren van de lagere prijzen moet de website van attractiepark Slagharen in de gaten houden.

Angelique Klar, bedrijfsdirecteur van Slagharen legt uit hoe het werkt: "Op de website staat voor iedere maand een overzicht met verschillende kleuren voor rustige of drukke dagen. Dit verandert constant door het aantal reserveringen en het aantal dagen voor aankomst. Des te vroeger je boekt, des te gunstiger de prijs." Een reservering voor de genoemde prijs staat vast. Het schema verandert niets meer aan deze prijs.

Slagharen is het eerste attractiepark in Nederland dat de flexibele prijzen invoert. Andere branches, zoals vliegtuigmaatschappijen gebruiken het systeem al langer. Een vroeg geboekt ticket is vaak een stuk goedkoper, dan een ticket dat vlak voor vertrekdatum is gekocht.

De prijs voor een dagje attractiepark liegt er normaal gesproken niet om. Ook Angelique Klar erkent dat de prijzen van attractieparken hoog liggen. Slagharen probeert hier met de wisselende prijzen op in te spelen. "We zien dat de consument bewuster is van zijn of haar uitgaven. Deze vijftig euro kunnen ze maar één keer uitgeven. Op dat bewustzijn willen we inspelen. Ook zagen we in het park enorme pieken en dalen. Op drukke dagen stonden er files voor het park en lange wachtrijen, terwijl we op andere dagen graag meer bezoekers wilden zien. Die extremen willen we eruit halen."Het nieuwe prijsbeleid valt volgens Klar goed onder de bezoekers van Slagharen: "De gemiddelde Nederlander is uit op een koopje, dat ben ik zelf ook. Of dat nu op Marktplaats, in de uitverkoop of voor een attractiepark geldt, wij zijn er kien op." Wie een kaartje online reserveert voor een rustige dag is absoluut goedkoper uit. Maar op drukke dagen blijft een entreeticket redelijk prijzig.

Volgens Klar is het nieuwe prijsbeleid al een succes. "We lanceerden de prijzen in januari en zijn nu ruim een week open. Het is nog heel prematuur, maar we hebben al wel tienduizenden reserveringen." Ook attractieparken Hellendoorn en Walibi World lieten weten de flexibele entreeprijzen toe te gaan passen.

Door Grytsje Anne Pietersma voor DagjeWeg.nl, 31/03/2010