Differentiate by using honest upfront pricing
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In honor of the upcoming quarterly taxes and the start of the annual season, I wanted to expound on something I noticed while staying in a hotel over the holidays.
Most people despise taxes because it feels like a hand is reaching into their pocket to take something without giving anything (tangible) back in return. Even those that feel they get something of value in return for taxes still don't have any positive emotions around making those payments.
Which is why it is baffling that any business would ever want to stimulate these same negative emotions by adding on fees to what should be a core cost of providing their services.
When businesses add surprise fees only on the checkout page, they may still get that conversion because users are less likely to abandon the cart over a few dollars it still creates a negative emotion between the brand and the user. Users will always feel somewhat cheated to have decided to make the purchase on one price only to find out that they have been lowballed and then suckered.
(This is less likely to happen in an offline physical setting because the dialog that would happen at the checkout counter might be a bit embarrassing for seller/retailer.)
Example of this are all around the Internet, but these are some egregious examples.
Resort fees at hotels have always seemed like a tax, but there used to be more tangible value when guests actually got a physical copy of a newspaper at their door, valued being able to make free local calls, and needed the convenience of printing out their boarding pass. Today when nearly everything is just a digital good the resort fee is just a hidden cost that should have been a part of the original price.
Cleaning fees from Airbnb on many properties can jack up the nightly cost by double to triple digit percentages. Providing a clean property is a core part of the service and should be included in whatever the advertised price is.
Following the lead of Ticketmaster all online ticket sales sites add various fees into the price that are a core part of what is being purchased. A fee to "deliver" the ticket by email? A venue fee? All sound like those are required in order to provide the purchased service.
On the flip side, there are great examples of businesses that take these extra fees and absorb them into the product pricing without any surprises.
Free shipping on any online retailer. Obviously shipping is never free but it is baked into the cost of the product and comparison shopping is very straightforward.
Lyft and Uber both are subjected to a number of fees from local regulators like airports and cities, but those are all included in the upfront price and only broken out on the receipt.
And lastly any business that does NOT charge a buyer to use credit cards is absorbing that cost into their pricing instead of forcing users to pay an additional 2-3% on top of the advertised purchase price.
Businesses that "tax" their users get away with it because users don't have another choice, but that doesn't mean that their users will forgive and forget. They leave themselves open to being disrupted by competitors who can advertise upfront and clear pricing. Truly caring about customers and brands means doing right by them even when you don't have to.
If you are in one of these industries, this creates an opportunity to build greater affinity towards your brand by providing that experience that competitors refuse to do, honest upfront pricing.
From a digital marketing affiliate standpoint, you can fill this information gap by sharing the all-in pricing and then sell that lead back to the provider who is not disclosing the full price.