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[Pricing] Why does the Nihon Keizai Shimbun's paper + digital version look like a bargain?
Roughly speaking
- Nikkei is doing well in the newspaper industry.
- Experimental results of subscription plans for the economic magazine "The Economist."
- When setting a subscription price, make sure that the plan you want to sell the most is a great deal.
Nikkei's good luck with sales of morning editions
It's been a while since I introduced some economics topics. This time we will focus on Nikkei's mysterious subscription fee pricing.
Now, the newspaper industry has been called a decline for a long time.
Looking at the industry as a whole, the number of newspapers has been declining steadily, but some newspapers are doing well. It is Nikkei, also known as the Nikkei Shimbun.
The purple in the above image is Nikkei, but Nikkei is doing well compared to the decline of other companies. Paper media is still selling well.
Of course, other factors may be considered, such as the age group of subscribers, but the Nikkei has economically distinctive pricing for subscription plans.
As you can see, the price difference between subscription fees for the digital and print standalone plans and the W plan is small, making it seem like a good deal for consumers.
The price difference is 4,000 yen - 4,900 yen for the stand alone, but the double plan has a price difference of 1,000 yen - 2,000 yen. The price of the product alone and the total amount of purchases of two items are not at all comparable.
In fact, there have been research cases in the past that have been subjected to this seemingly strange price setting. I'll introduce it in the next section and beyond.
The reference for the case is "An incredible marketing taught by a professor at the University of Tokyo (Abe Makoto/KADOKAWA)", the best personal marketing book.
The Economist pricing experiment
Below are the results of 100 people from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management regarding the annual subscription plan for the economic magazine "The Economist."
Table 1 provides Plans A (web version), B (printed version), and C (printed version and web version), and Table 2 provides a re-survey with the exception of Plan B (printed version).
The result is that more people have chosen cheaper plans without Plan B.
For some reason. This means that Plan B, which is only a printed version, is a decoy and Plan C feels cheaper, so it seems like it's a better deal if you choose Plan C.
This is called the anchoring effect in economic terms.
Subscription pricing strategy
It is also effective in the recent trend of subscription pricing strategies.
In order to make the plans you actually want to buy at a discount, we will prepare a decoy plan that is not worth it no matter how you look at it.
This will result in users buying expensive plans.
It's a basic marketing strategy, but it's strong so I hope it will be used as a reference for developing new products.
Side note (recommended book section)
Recommended design books. Packed with tips for designs that you can use forever. I use it a lot too.
