Running promotions are a common way to move inventory and boost revenue. While promotions weren’t as frequent this year, last year was highly promotional to work through the glut of grill inventory. Gozney, who can be promotional themselves, are doing the opposite this fall and raising prices.
Price Increases
This is the second time in three years that Gozney has raised prices on their products. As their CEO noted, it’s a function of the volatility of materials and supply chain for their products.
Over the last few years our business has experienced rapid growth and expansion across the globe. There’s never been more transparency in pricing across global markets and as we continue to mature as a business, we’ve decided to move to a global pricing structure so that you can purchase our products for the same price no matter where in the world you live. Especially with further growth on the horizon and us continuing to experience ongoing fluctuations in the costs of raw materials, regional tariffs and logistics.
Denny Bruce, CEO of Gozney
It’s probably also a function of being a start-up and finding a path to profitability. Gozney has been able to have solid revenue growth, but as their latest financials show, they’re still losing money. They’ve funded their growth through raising capital, but that’s not a long-term substitute for positive cash flow.
Price Increases to Drive Sales
When Gozney has done price increases, they’ve sent out an email to announce it and to detail why. It’s a touch that not many companies do, but it’s a level of transparency that I appreciate. I’d rather know a product going to be more expensive for my buying decision, than waiting to buy it only to realize at the last minute that I have to pay more.
It seems reasonable that announcing price increases could have a similar effect of running a promotion without having to discount. If you’re nearing a purchase, you’ll jump at buying it because it will have the perception that you’re getting it for cheaper.
Left-Digit Bias
Other than the new Arc XL pizza oven that’s jumping by $100 – which makes sense when looking at their line-up – no other prices are increasing by more than $0.99. In fact, many prices are decreasing by a penny.
Product | Current RRP | New RRP |
Dome – Dual Fuel – LPG | $1,999.00 | $1,999.99 |
Dome – Dual Fuel – NG | $1,999.00 | $1,999.99 |
Dome S1 | $1,499.00 | $1,499.99 |
Arc XL | $799.00 | $899.99 |
Arc | $699.00 | $699.99 |
Roccbox | $499.00 | $499.99 |
Flue Extension | $75.00 | $74.99 |
Dome Door | $125.00 | $124.99 |
Dome Steam Injector | $35.00 | $34.99 |
It would appear that Gozney is relying on a pricing strategy known as left-digit bias. It’s an idea thats customers focus more on the digits to the left of the decimal and interpret an item as being cheaper.
For the items that they’re increasing by $0.99, customers likely won’t even interpret the items as costing more. Despite that, Gozney will earn an extra little bit of extra money on every unit sold.
Conversely, for items that are decreasing by a penny, customers may view the item as being cheaper. This can translate to an increase in the number of units sold, only at the expense at $0.01 per unit. It may seem minor, but it can result in 3% to 5% more units sold.