No Kidding, Bruce?

By Kevin Meyer

Today I read one of the dumbest articles I've ever seen in The Wall Street Journal - a piece that might enlighten a third grader looking to learn something about how to improve the performance of his lemonade stand.  No, that's being too generous.

The article tries to describe how executives are trying to find the right price points in this crazy market.  Sure it's a challenge, but unless you are still living under a rock and trying to sell at some set percentage above your cost instead of understanding value from the perspective of the customer, it's a known challenge.  So here's a snippet from this insightful article:

[OfficeMax] Chief Financial Officer Bruce Besanko said he is keeping a close eye on pricing. He said there have been cases where shoppers stopped buying items that became more expensive, so he had to adjust them back down.

Really?  Wow, I should try that.  Here all this time I've been raising prices when my sales dropped.  Go figure.  Here's another:

Through the course of a day, the [Royal Caribbean] cruise operator adjusts hundreds of prices. Still, Mr. Rice said fare prices haven't returned to prerecession levels. "We clearly don't have our pricing where we need it to be," he said. Ticket revenue in the second quarter grew 7.1% from the year-ago quarter.

Seriously... "pricing where we need it to be"??  Value is not price, price is not value.  Value is from the perspective of the customer, and it's either really there, not understood by the customer, or it's not there and eventually you won't be able to pull the wool over their eyes.  Create some additional value or do a better job of explaining the value, and maybe you'll be able to negotiate higher prices.

If these jokers ran a lemonade stand... well, nevermind.