Packaging and Pricing Thoughts

I just bought some Breyer's ice cream the other day. It was on sale for $3.99 for the flavor Waffle Cone ... or so did I thought. When I got home, I dished it out to the kids and then proceeded to give my self a healthy portion. Said to myself "This looks a little different" regarding the packaging. What was different about this? It sure was great, especially if you like texture to your ice cream! Walla! The side of the package said 1.5 quarts! I wasn't buying it on sale! I was paying $2.66 a quart. What happened was that Breyers has been making the shift from 1.75 quarts to 1.5 quarts. I didn't notice a number of years ago when they went from half a gallon to 1.75. Anyway, I was paying $4.59 for 1.75 quarts or $2.62 per quart. I thought I was getting a 60 cent price savings but in reality it turned out to be the equivalent of a six cent price increase.

Food for thought for the continuing education unit, no pun intended. Are you creating smaller packages or certificates for your valued programs in this challenging economy? Ice cream is often times considered a premium product. Breyers stealthfully manuevered a price increase disguised as an increase in value.

As a continuing education unit, are you looking at whether you can break up your bachelor's and master's degrees into smaller, yet more costly pieces to increase revenues and possibly enrollments. While the ice cream metaphor is different, for education there is some wisdom in this approach. Potential students will see the certificate as steps along the way in obtaining their full degree. This is not a novel concept and it is not packaged as an ice cream ploy, but feels more customer centric. A consumer might ask, "Why in the world would a university do this? They must be trying to help me ... making education more accessible and a credential easier to reach. Certainly, this is not a scheme to get more of my money.

It will be interesting to see if this works for Breyers, but should be reasonable strategy for higher education, as long as we assume we have a good enough product that can be delivered in meaningful and valued pieces.