Outthinkers #108—Jean-Manuel Izaret: Mastering Your Pricing Strategy: Tips and Insights from JMI of BCG
Jean-Manuel Izaret, or, JMI as he often prefers to go by, is a BCG managing director and senior partner and the global leader of the Marketing, Sales & Pricing practice based in San Francisco. His work as a BCG Fellow focuses on the topic of pricing model transformation. JMI has worked on pricing issues across industries, including consumer goods, retail, high tech, financial services, and industrial goods.
JMI has a talent for condensing the intricate and vast topic of pricing into clear, simple concepts that any business person can apply. His book, Game Changer: How Strategic Pricing Shapes Businesses, Markets, and Society, released just this October 2023, and co-written with Arnab Sinha, was written with the mission to flip the flawed and clichéd conversations surrounding pricing to an approach that promises winning strategies for greater and fairer value to the buyer and seller and to society at large.
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In this episode, he shares:
- His concept of the Strategic Pricing Hexagon—a framework that enables decision makers to formulate a clear pricing strategy and shape their business and markets with authority using seven logical and distinct pricing games
- The top decisions people often get wrong about pricing—and how to avoid them
- How to choose what unit to charge by, and how this has the power to changes your entire business model—Illustrated nicely through the simple case of the way in which we buy, lease, or hire cars.
- Three trends that have changed pricing models—and how you can use these to your advantage
- And a bonus interesting historical take on tipping—and how this originated and evolved in various parts of the world.
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Episode Timeline:
00:00—Highlight from today's episode
00:56—Introducing JMI + The topic of today’s episode
3:32—If you really know me, you know that...
5:36—What do people most get wrong when approaching pricing?
7:43—How Netflix's change in their pricing model evolved over time, radically changing the business model itself
8:48—How does a business decide on what unit to use to when establishing price?
12:17—How do you decide what part of the market or customer segment is going to dictate and most influence the decisions you make when shaping your business model and product?
16:57—What has changed over time about pricing?
20:12—Could you walk us through your Hexagon pricing model?
23:58—What are your thoughts around the rise in dynamic pricing?
26:37—As an interesting side tangent—why do you think Europeans have such a different relationship with tipping than Americans?
29:24—How can people follow you and connect with you to continue learning from you?
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Additional Resources:
Author Website:https://www.izaret.net/bio
Book website: https
Thank you to our guests, thank you to our executive producer, Karina Reyes, our editor, Zach Ness, and the rest of the team. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. I'm your host, Kaihan Krippendorff. Thank you for listening.
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