[Link to Supermarket Pricing Kata]
For a starter we need first to define each of the components that we have in our model by asking questions:
- Why would the customer want to buy more than a can of beans?
- Does the product offer discounts or free product every third or fourth piece/pound?
- What's the type of the supermarket? Is it local? International? Members only? Wholesale?
After going through the previous questions and defining the business model, we can come up with a plan to market our product.
Let's assume that 3 is the most common number among customers who buy Beans. In order to come up with a plan for the customer to buy more cans we should provide at least two strategies:-
- Offering a fourth can for free; Focus on whole selling big quantities
- Here, let's assume 3 cans cost $1.00. We can price a can for $0.4 per and keep that consistent with every can for every 3 cans which will round up to a $1.00 ... that will include using percentages to define how much we cut out of the price to avoid fractions. This might be confusing for the customer but offering a 4th can for free can be tempting at this point.
- Lowering price per can so the product will still have a value price in the perspective of a customer.
- In this situation, we assume that every can costs about $0.25. This strategy will make it easier to the customer to calculate how much they can buy and to what limit they should stop. The possibility here is that it's not as compelling as offering a free fourth can. In this case, we should ask, What's the quality of our product? How does it compare to a similar product in the supermarket?
There are different marketing strategies based on every product and the more we research the product and analyze the market, the easier we market it.