Cost of Products and Services

Do you have a product or service that you want to sell overseas? Do you need to compare how much things cost over there? It’s essential for the price to be in line with your target audience’s income and expectations, but also provide the level of profit you want. Establishing the average cost of a product in the market can help with this pricing metric. Here’s a tool by Deutsche Bank, that has the price of a cappuccino to the cost of a pair of Levi’s in 50 cities.

Apple Devices

Between December 19 - 25, Apple devices accounted for 51% of all new device activations around the world. The iPhone 6+, Apple's first venture into the phablet market, was also among the Top 5 devices and contributed to the jump in popularity that phablets saw this year.

Phablet activations were up from 4% in 2013 to 13% in 2014, but this was at the expense of tablet activations, which dropped 35% in 2014 compared to 2013 numbers. Maybe manufacturers are having a hard time convincing consumers about the worth of a tablet versus a bigger phone.

Here's a chart, courtesy of Statista.

India's Building Boom

With the current housing crisis and building boom in Auckland and Christchurch, it was interesting to come across this article from Nielsen about India's housing situation. A rising middle class means that consumers are taking advantage of easy finance and tax incentives and are choosing to build new homes. The numbers are huge, with a need for 12 million housing units to be constructed in urban India. The market spend of housing projects for low and middle income groups alone will touch $40 billion in seven years. India may be a market that could hold a lot of appeal for New Zealand suppliers of building products.

Chinese Tourists Love New Zealand!

Chinese tourists believe that New Zealand is the most satisfying destination to visit according to research undertaken by the Chinese Tourism Academy. When the Chinese travel overseas, their top three concerns were the need to feel safe, having access to information in Chinese, and confidence that they are receiving value for money. These tourists also highly value the overall atmosphere in a country, along with good transportation and urban management.

Use Research for Success

Graham McGregor's column in the New Zealand Herald describes how facts can be used to build compelling sales propositions. He gave an example of a company who used their industry knowledge to build their brand, and were consequently seen as a market leader. It's not hard to get good facts to support how your product or service can help customers. Just make sure that the information is up-to-date and comes from an authoritative source. Don't make your customers question the statistics from a dodgy source - it's just going to make them doubt you and the solution you are trying to sell.

Embrace your forgetfulness!

An article in the BRW has been extolling the virtues of forgetting what you know, and being open to getting new information that shakes up your perceptions. The author says that "if we refuse to let go of what we know when the knowledge is obsolete, it can interfere with our ability to keep up with the onslaught of change." Being an expert isn't always relevant anymore - you need to know who and where the disrupters to your world are, and they aren't necessarily in your industry right now.