Thomas McKinlay’s Post

It sounds interesting to learn about the subtraction principle of pricing strategy. Perhaps the left-digit effect also explains how people perceive the left price display as the reference point for price comparison.

Strategic pricing isn't about guesswork; it's about data-driven insights. By analyzing sales from the last 30-90 days, active listings, and expired items, we uncover a true market value range. This data-informed approach moves beyond mere wishes or assumptions. Understanding this market-supported range is crucial for effective pricing strategies. #PricingStrategy #MarketAnalysis #BusinessGrowth #SalesData

Every market has a version of the same problem: a long tail of independent outlets that are too expensive to serve well with the traditional sales rep model. The economics don't work - a rep visit to a shop doing €300 a month in beverages costs more than the margin. So outlets adapt. They start ordering by text, then voice notes, then photos of empty shelves sent directly to distributor phones. Informal infrastructure, but perfectly functional. This isn't a niche behavior - we see it everywhere. What nFuse does is formalize that. Turn the message thread into a structured order, give the distributor the data, give the outlet the speed. The distributors moving fastest on this aren't doing it because they're more advanced. They're doing it because someone did the math on their long tail and didn't like what they found - hundreds of outlets ordering 5 times a year when they could be ordering weekly. The infrastructure to change that already exists in the outlet's pocket. Whatever messaging app they already use. Which markets in your region are still running on informal ordering infrastructure?

💡 Pricing isn’t a one-time decision. It’s a system you build and refine. If you want pricing that actually drives growth, you need a clear process. Here’s a simple framework anyone in retail or FMCG can follow 👇 ⸻ 🧭 Step 1: Start with your objective Before touching price, be clear on your goal: • 💰 Increase revenue • 📈 Improve margin • 🛒 Grow market share • 🏷️ Strengthen brand positioning Your pricing should always serve one of these. ⸻ 🧩 Step 2: Segment your products Not all products play the same role. Group them into: • 🧱 Core (your main sellers) • 💎 Premium (higher value, higher margin) • 💸 Value (volume drivers) • 🎯 Seasonal or experimental This creates structure and clarity. ⸻ 🏗️ Step 3: Assign clear price tiers Each group should sit in a clear price band. 👉 Customers should instantly see what’s premium, core, and value. If everything is priced too close together, you create confusion. ⸻ 📦 Step 4: Build pricing around pack sizes Different shoppers have different needs. • Small packs for quick or impulse buys • Medium packs for everyday use • Large packs for stock-ups 👉 Make sure the price per unit makes sense across sizes 👉 Bigger packs should feel like better value, not random pricing ⸻ 📊 Step 5: Understand price sensitivity Look at your past data: • What happened when prices changed? • Which products lost volume quickly? • Which held steady? 👉 Use this to guide pricing and promotions, not guesswork. ⸻ 🎯 Step 6: Align promotions with your structure Discounts should support your strategy, not break it. Avoid: • Making premium cheaper than core • Destroying your price hierarchy 👉 Always protect your key price anchors. ⸻ 🔁 Step 7: Monitor and improve continuously Pricing is never “done”. Track: • Sales performance 📈 • Margins 💰 • Customer behaviour 🧠 Then adjust: • Price gaps • Pack sizes • Product roles ⸻ 🚀 Final Thought Great pricing is not about reacting. It’s about building a system that guides customer decisions every single day. Do this well, and pricing becomes one of your strongest growth levers. ⸻ #PricingStrategy #Retail #FMCG #CommercialExcellence #Growth

The Science of Pricing: Maximizing Your Market Profit Margins Pricing is a critical element of marketing strategy and has significant implications for profitability. Understanding the science of pricing can empower businesses to set prices that not only cover costs but also maximize market share and profit margins. This article explores various facets of pricing, including psychological pricing, value-based pricing, competitive analysis, and the factors influencing consumer behavior. Understanding Pricing Strategies…...

🎯 I came across this question on X and here is my Opinion: Product A : Sales 2M; Profit 1M Product B : Sales 500k; Profit 400k Product C : Sales 2M; Profit -100k Product D : Sales 3M; Profit 3M Product A: Continue all current strategies driving this product's performance — including existing advertising spend, pricing strategy, supplier relationships and distribution channels. Avoid unnecessary changes to a formula that is clearly working ✅ . Product B: Adopt strategies for product A especially Advert and Pricing Reviews ✅ . Product C: This product is running on a loss: First step to tackle this is to know why this product is running at a loss. Reasons may Include: 1.  Being a new product and building customer base ✔️ 2.  Production cost being higher than selling price ✔️ 3.  High discount ✔️ 4.  Few customers buying, High Return Rate and bad reviews ✔️ Recommendations: 1.  Give a time frame 3-6 months before reviewing product again ✔️ 2.  Decrease production cost ✔️ 3.  Completely remove discount or reduce drastically ✔️ 4.  Re-brand, Reposition or target a new customer segment ✔️ 5.  Work towards the bad reviews and improve it ✔️ Product D: This is technically impossible and should be flagged as data error ❌ . The Data pipeline should be checked for improvement. Drop yours in the comment section lets learn together. #DataAnalytics #BuildingInPublic

Here’s the sharpened truth most operators miss: revenue doesn’t scale from ambition, it scales from repeatable inputs. When your inputs are controlled, your outputs become predictable. When your outputs are predictable, growth stops being a gamble and starts behaving like a system. Strategic Sales Positioning | Food By The Word Over the past 24 months, Food By The Word has not simply supplied ingredients, we have engineered a performance-driven supply architecture that sits at the core of our partners’ revenue engines. This is not transactional sourcing. This is infrastructure. Our model is built on one non-negotiable principle: consistency at the input level eliminates volatility at the output level. By delivering high-integrity, performance-critical ingredients with precision and reliability, we enable operators to lock in product quality, streamline production, and remove the hidden friction that erodes margin and customer trust. The downstream impact is both measurable and repeatable: $2M–$3M in incremental annual revenue generated by partners Increased production confidence with reduced operational variability Strengthened brand equity driven by consistent end-product delivery Scalable growth without degradation in quality or customer experience These outcomes are not the result of marketing lift or temporary demand spikes. They are the result of structural alignment within the supply chain, the kind that compounds quarter over quarter and positions businesses to outperform in tightening markets. Let’s be direct: most businesses attempt to scale by pushing harder on sales while tolerating instability behind the scenes. That model breaks under pressure. What we deliver is the opposite, a fortified backend that allows the front end to expand aggressively without failure points. Food By The Word is not a vendor. We are a force multiplier inside your operation. If your objective is to scale revenue, protect margins, and build a product line that performs the same on its 10,000th unit as it did on its first, then the path forward is clear: stabilize your inputs, and the outputs will follow. www.foodbytheword.com

Pricing is often treated as a math problem involving margins and market benchmarks. When you anchor your business purely in cost-plus calculations, you are positioning your product as a commodity that is one competitor away from being undercut. The brands that survive shifts in consumer sentiment do not compete on price. They compete on the cost of switching their belief systems. When you build a community around a specific identity or a set of values, you stop selling features and start selling a piece of your customer's worldview. Look at the brands that remain culturally relevant regardless of economic cycles. They are not the cheapest options on the shelf. They are the only options that align with the specific way their customers want to be perceived. If you are currently trapped in a race to the bottom, the solution is not a discount or a new ad campaign. The solution is defining what your brand stands for that cannot be copied by a competitor with a lower manufacturing cost. Stop trying to optimize your price and start hardening your philosophy. #Founders #LinkedInMarketing #BrandStrategy #IndustryInsights

It’s mind boggling to me that for years, raw material suppliers couldn’t solve the single problem of offering better lead times and smaller pack sizes. It looks like it didn’t occur to anyone that both problems are connected to each other. They always ask customers to provide a forecast so they can improve lead times without actually thinking about tapping into the source of that forecast data partnering with formulator tools and other software solutions that track and show historical usage. That way they can pre-pack for small customers and preorder for larger ones. It’s a really simple solution for a simple problem. Instead of paying crazy commissions to sales people and ineffective, outdated distributors that still go door to door with a paper catalog. And then comes the pricing issue. None of them want to share their prices because of the constant price negotiation to account for scale, sales commissions, and all the other bullshit. A lot of raw material suppliers are not even cooperative with us or Good Face Project for that matter to provide proper documentation, composition, or even a damn product description. They are used to the good old UL Prospector. Paying $200k per quarter to “allow” people to essentially email them for a sample. I did a quick experiment and scraped every major database for fun. 80% of the ingredients don’t have up to date information. How can we talk about proper regulatory tools when the supply chain is this dysfunctional? In the coming weeks, we will release every major vendor cost per kg on our platform. If the vendor is not on the platform, we will offer an alternative product for a better price.

Never reduce the price without a proper explanation. People can become very suspicious when they see prices drop. Why would that happen? This story from Richard Shotton reminded me of a project we did for the largest gas station network in the country. They were promoting a low price per gallon together with high product quality. But we discovered that low prices and high quality are very hard to communicate together. People simply don’t believe that quality can cost that little. So… always provide an explanation why your product costs that little or much. :-)