At the start of the last school year as I stood in a queue I overheard a mother asking an assistant if the $200 calculator she was holding would be coming down in price. The assistant replied that this had been the price for a while, pointing out that the calculator was only required for certain levels of maths. Of course the mother bought the calculator. “Oh well we’ll take it then, because he will be doing advanced maths next year,” she said.

For a long time marketers thought that rational human beings made decisions based on the facts alone. So advertising was designed to help us to weigh up the benefits versus the costs. The truth is that being human means we rationalize all the time, and that most buying decisions we make have little or nothing to do with price.

That’s why we stand in line for twenty minutes at trendy cafes, to pay $4 for a cup of coffee served in a paper cup. It’s also why we spend $23 billion a year on vitamin supplements even though we have no idea if they work.

Value for money then is subjective.

The price of your product or service is part of a story that your customers want to tell themselves. I’m worth it. He cares. Our kid’s success matters.

What story are you enabling your customers to tell?

Image by Apun Pital.