Game Changer: How Strategic Pricing Shapes Businesses, Markets, and Society
Jean-Manuel Izaret and Arnab Sinha
Wiley (October 2023)
How to formulate a pricing strategy with speed, confidence, efficiency, and impact
According to Jean-Manuel Izaret and Arnab Sinha, Game Changer “will change the game of pricing, literally and figuratively. We will reveal the dangerous flaws behind the prevailing pricing ‘game.’ because there is too much at stake to let misconceptions about pricing persist. But our larger and more important mission is to show you, step by step, how the right pricing strategy can change the entire trajectory of your business, your industry, and, in many cases, society as well.”
For example, here are four new perspectives based on how incentives and tradeoffs have changed:
1. Collaborative growth, not zero sum.
2. Value sharing, not value extraction.
3. Dynamic, not static.
4. Strategy, not numbers
See Pages 2-4
These are among the other passages of greatest interest and value to me, also listed to suggest the scope and nature of Izazret and Sinha’s coverage:
o Three Information Sources (Pages 25-28)
o Seven Games in the Strategic Pricing Hexagon (51-67)
o Six Market Forces (69-76)
o Pricing authority and leadership in the seven pricing games (80-89)
o The Value Game: When Art Trumps Science (109-118)
o The Uniform Game: The All-Time Classic (119-133)
o The Cost Game: Where Efficiency Reigns (134-147)
o The Power Game: Where Every Move Counts (147-162)
o Impact: Getting a firm grip on pricing (163-178)
o The Choice Gamer: Framing Options for Customers (179-183)
o The Dynamic Game: When Everything Matters Game (194-206)
o Innovation: Seizing a Step-Change Opportunity (211-218)
o AI: Perfecting Price Differentiation (228-236)
o Scale: Achieving the Ultimate Cost Advantage (246-253)
o Progressive pricing as a practical application for low-marginal-cost offers (277-280)
o Benefits of the payer licensing agreement (308-3240
o Redesigning offers to reshape the green demand curve (314-322)
o CO2: How to Encourage Lower Carbon Emissions (325-336)
o Impact: How Progressive Pricing Can Scale Social Ventures (337-348)
o The Epilogue (349-352)
Obviously, no brief commentary such as mine could possibly do full justice to the quality and significance of the information, insights, and counsel that Jean-Manuel Izaret and Arnab Sinha provide in abundance. However, I hope I have at least indicated why I think so highly of Game Changer, especially now when the global marketplace is mored volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous than at any prior time that I can recall. Theirs is a major contribution to knowledge leadership. Bravo!
While reading Game Changer, highlight key passages, and, record your comments, questions, action steps (preferably with deadlines), page references, and lessons you have learned as well as your responses to the questions posed within the narrative. These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will facilitate, indeed expedite frequent reviews of key material later.