Suggestion: price management

[anshuk]

Hi David,

I find that I spend a large amount of time changing prices of items in my retail store -to keep up with competitors' price changes. How would you think about an option that would automatically update prices such that overall competitiveness of product matches the best competitor? Maybe it could display an alert if price change is too drastic. This might make the game more strategic and less operational.

Cheers,
Anshuk

[jm554]

+1

This is a good idea if it is implemented as an option like you said. Playing with seven cities and introducing multiple products tends to lead to a lot of frustration. I have to always pause the game and set the prices so that the overall rating is higher than the competitors'. Wouldn't an automatic pricing option be 'fair' since the AI seems to update its own prices rather quickly and frequently?

I still think micromanagement is the biggest issue with the game.

[Kristo]

May I? Ok.

My idea is this:
Let's say you play in NYC and London. You got more than 20 supermarkets in those cities. You sell stuff like bread, candies, wine etc.
The wine purchasing price in NY is $50, in London is $60. You set the NY price at $75 and London's at $80. After you play several years, the purchasing price, the competitors price and other values go crazy and you have to adjust the prices in both cities, in every single store.
But if the game give you "percentage profits" - a slider which adjust this in whole town simultaneosly for the same item. Here's how would work:
Wine prices are 50 and 60. You set the slider to 20%. So now you sell wine at - 60 and 72 resp. A year later, you see that the competitors price in NY is around 56, so you fix the NY'slider back to 10%, and your prices is now 55. Again - in London your purchasing price of wine goes down to 40, and the game automaticly adjust your selling price with 20%, and it's now 48.

This can work even better with items like PC, TV, smartphones - you buy them from your factory at low cost, and give them 90% profit percentage, and becouse of your brand strategy, loyalty and tech level, people still buy them. You can make the slider even 200% and this'll still be working. Just like in real life.

Hope, this can help.

[mwyeoh]

Hi guys

If you adjust the prices through the product details screen, you can adjust ALL the prices in ALL your shops in a single city in one click (The apply all button)

As for the automatic price management, that is what the COO can do for you. It doesnt work that well, but the 'competitiveness' adjusts how well the COO will adjust your prices automatically in relation to the AI. However if not monitored, it can lead to a pricewar without your knowledge

[jm554]

My idea is this:
Let's say you play in NYC and London. You got more than 20 supermarkets in those cities. You sell stuff like bread, candies, wine etc.
The wine purchasing price in NY is $50, in London is $60. You set the NY price at $75 and London's at $80. After you play several years, the purchasing price, the competitors price and other values go crazy and you have to adjust the prices in both cities, in every single store.
But if the game give you "percentage profits" - a slider which adjust this in whole town simultaneosly for the same item. Here's how would work:
Wine prices are 50 and 60. You set the slider to 20%. So now you sell wine at - 60 and 72 resp. A year later, you see that the competitors price in NY is around 56, so you fix the NY'slider back to 10%, and your prices is now 55. Again - in London your purchasing price of wine goes down to 40, and the game automaticly adjust your selling price with 20%, and it's now 48.

This can work even better with items like PC, TV, smartphones - you buy them from your factory at low cost, and give them 90% profit percentage, and becouse of your brand strategy, loyalty and tech level, people still buy them. You can make the slider even 200% and this'll still be working. Just like in real life.

Hope, this can help.

Something like this would help enormously.

As for the automatic price management, that is what the COO can do for you. It doesnt work that well, but the 'competitiveness' adjusts how well the COO will adjust your prices automatically in relation to the AI. However if not monitored, it can lead to a pricewar without your knowledge

I've tried toying with the COO but didn't get much out of it. I don't like the idea of paying a wage of around $70mil for a person doing nothing when my company is earning $200 mil profits each year. But hey, maybe the game just simulates real-life business .

I wouldn't mind employing a COO if 1) the prices were set immediately at a level (say the competitors' overall rating + x but a minimum price level could also be used) and 2) the COO would be paid less. I mean you could employ a summer intern to just adjust the prices to an overall level of x+1.

The fewer mouse clicks needed to complete a game - the better.

[mwyeoh]

Yeah, they are all way too expensive which is why I never use them, since they offer very very little benefit

[mrbcap]

Yeah, a "mark-up %" would be great.

[City Builder]

Yeah, a "mark-up %" would be great.

I think that is also what I would like to see, I think...

Basically someplace (maybe the HQ) where I can choose each product individually (or adjust them all at the same time, or a combination of products, i.e. choose shoes, dvd, tv. Or choose all items together, or maybe choose a particular technology or type of items), anyway, I'd like to see something like

- / % / +

Shoes - ## +
DVD - ## +

In this manner I can either press the - or + buttons to change the ## to either be ##% higher or lower than the highest or lowest competitor. Where ## will show the percentage either in green or red to indicate that I'm higher or lower than the competition.

Yeah this may take making a whole new panel or sub panel to do something like this but I'd love to be able to have the control of ALL of my retail sales instead of a by city, or by individual only product.

Just my thoughts.

[Kristo]

Wait a second, let me see if i get this right:

Let's say SHOES. I buy them from some factory for $40, and sell them in my shoes' stores for $50. That's that.
My competitor buy them from their own factory for $10 and sell them for just $20.

So i go to the HQ and see that nobody buys my shoes, coz they're way too expensive - 50 > 20. So i click ot "-" and adjust it to go -20% less than my competitors OR just set the price to $20 for my shoes also. Then my price is the same, but here's the tricky thing - i buy shoes for 40 and sell them for 20 = i lose money.

So the choice for me is - either stop selling shoes or just sell shoes and don't make profit with this.

Is that correct?

[City Builder]

Well, I wouldn't need to adjust in that case, I would simply stop selling the shoes UNLESS they're making me good money in which case I have no reason to adjust the price, but if I feel that space could be better utilized to sell something else faster and make me more money they yeah, I'd stop selling the shoes.

The only time that I sell things at a loss is if they're moving so slow that it's going to take years to clear out my inventory, then I do a rock bottom sale and just try to get rid of all of them as I feel it's better to get at least a little something than to just clear the inventory and lose it all.

This can also be put into reverse where you would want to use that - + %% such as you make silver necklaces and sell to your competitor for 170, they turn around and sell them at 310, but you've been selling them at 350 and you want to bring it down with to your competitors to maintain the sales, so you drop it by maybe 2% under what they are selling it for.

Or whatever % you feel is appropriate.

I'm sure others could better explain the positive aspect than I can.