Tim Baker: What Price Value

Tim Baker is the director of Baker Richards Consulting which specialises in pricing research, data mining and marketing consultancy to help cultural organisations maximise their earned income and admissions. Tim Baker gave a presentation on 'What Price Value' at the Creative New Zealand 21st Century Arts Conference.

“The problem is that ticket prices are too high. If only they could be reduced, more people would come.”

The complaint echoes through press articles, boardrooms and funding meetings. But should price always get the blame for poor audience figures?

Thousands of young men pay large amounts of money to attend sports events every week. Would they pay the same to watch a play, go to a concert or attend contemporary dance? In most cases, probably not. But price is not the problem - it’s the value (or lack of it) that they associate with the experience on offer.

Whether your organisation is large or small, performing or visual arts, the principles of price differentiation apply. If it is not possible to put “price breaks” in an auditorium, or your organisation is not auditorium-based, you need to look at other options for differentiation.

That might be differentiating by day of week, time of day, time of booking, or product, among other things. In cultural organisations there is a wide variety of tactics that can be used to differentiate prices.

The key to a sophisticated pricing strategy is setting a range of prices to reflect the individual value perceptions of different customers for different events.