HoT Pricing Strategy and Client Perception
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Harakael.5830
Hi guys, gals and fellow quaggans,
I want to give you all my analisis on the HoT packages, im not trying to do this complicated, but to state some facts from a professional CRM & sales point of view, i looked for a feedback email but couldnt find any so here i am
I apologize on advance on my rusty english grammar
Anyways and first of all im not going to complain about prices, as i consider HoT cheap according to all the benefits and updates ANET has given all of us over time,
Just to state some of them you may have forgotten, or grown accustomed to:
We have a great community(For those who are in good servers :P)
Stable and competitive gaming world
Diversity of game modes PVE, PVP, WVW
Good Servers, low lag!! ( I live in Peru i should know)
Great Skin and Dye System
No P2W or P2P system
Being the last one i think one of the strongest brand loyalty assets the company has with us: clients, community, family or how you would like to refer to it.
Personally I would have never played GW2 if it was one of the previous commented, P2W or P2P, have played many mmorpgs of those and they done “work” like they should, that is why i try to help by gifting games to my friends, as any business person we all know we need to cover our fixed cost, wages, investments, servers, connectivity, and relying on Trading Post profits is alway hard as it is completely variable.
I wanted to state also that i am compelled, loyal, in love and totally addicted to GW2 in a good manner.
So, what happened with the HoT packages sale when i saw it.
50 USD for the expansion + core game for new users
Ok i must confess i laughed on people complaining by price, telling them, -”Hey it says it has a core client you won’t need, they will surely announce another pre-order offer for only expansion, im sure about it.”- Now i know i am wrong about it as i could finally read over it.
To make it simple im going to go Herzberg(Not Heisenberg please BB fans, dont), Herzberg as a simple 2 factor analysis on motivation. I consider motivation important for clients as for co workers, even his theory it is only applied to coworkers i seem it fit to differentiate concepts.
So what happens withs Herzberg, we have 2 factor, Higienic and Motivational, tangible and intangible. I like to work with motivational, specially recognition wise.
And i will be addressing the old gamer community, being them from 2012,2013,2014.
I will not add all the people that got the game by 10usd even if that includes 10 ppl i gifted the game, as one could say, they had it easy.
So focusin of the 50usd package Hot+Core, i must confess it is really demotivational to buy something that you can’t use, i was hoping to gift that core client and maybe lure someone into buying the HoT expansion(if it was available to be sellable alone) and making our community bigger.
There’s also no recognition on previous gamers, i mean maybe a title? A vision crystal, a miniature pet, something, anything?
It practically makes pre-order and beta players to feel they have been put in with all the last 10 dollar sale bunch of people and i think we should differentiate them, the old loyal community with the newcomers.
Sales strategy should be different, i know it’s more time, resources and expenses, but it will pay back.
For instance this 28yr old peruvian is so brand/game loyal he has gifted 15 accounts so far to his friends/game buddies so they can come to know this beautiful world we live in Tyria, non-mattering his country economics is about ? of USA currency relevance makes for him that 50 USD to be like 150 USD, the pricing is correct, i would even pay up to 60 USD as on the original preorder i bought in 2012.
You guys have a great product and service, that is why i am so surprised by the packages presentation, you could had a better “skimming” strategy, because we all know that is what pre-order are about and we pay it willingly, at least i do and that is not an easy thing to obtain from me.
Now a practical example, you could have given an invented valorization of core game, lets say $5-10 USD,
So HoT + Core at 60 USD
and
HoT alone at 55 USD this applying to:
Those who bought the game on a 10usd promotion and/or after 2014, in 2015, etc.
Maybe make it even more selective making a special offer for beta testers and pre-orders from 2012 at 55 USD and all the others 60 USD.
It doesn’t seem to me it would affect your other pricing intervals, i would actually say it could lean buyers to buy the Deluxe edition, 14 USD difference is like going to Starbucks, so i don’t think it is really a hard call for the type of gamers you need/want on the game.
Massification is always attractive due to scale economies, the pacing to achieving the massification is the pace to success in this cases and it is important to know what clients/markets you are wanting to work with.
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