Friend! Remember this shirt?

Uniqlo x Kaws co-branded

The T-shirt, officially priced at ￥99, was snapped up nationwide on its first day of sale, peaking at around ￥1,000 each. The man in the picture is a friend of mine.

Uniqlo x Kaws co-branded models by the mad rush, the terrible is not the fans, is the human heart www.shejipi.com

And T-shirt cost price is ridiculously low, non-branded T-shirts can often be sold for as low as ￥ 10 or even ￥ 3 in the upstream market of clothing T-shirts are often weighed by the pound!

Yes, the difference in price between the same two pieces of clothing can be thousands of times greater in extreme cases, depending on the brand or the culture behind it, and that's the norm in everyday life, so we don't think there's anything wrong with that.

And what accounts for the profit margin in the middle? To put it nicely, it's called a 'brand premium', and to put it less nicely, it's called an 'IQ tax'. Neither is wrong, but neither is the essential reason, and the most essential reason is actually:

Consumerism origin: price discrimination

Before answering HOW, I must first state WHY.

For example, a trench coat brand A sells for ￥5,000, while the same trench coat brand B sells for ￥500. Do you think brand A is making a huge profit, and is definitely making a fortune, while brand B is making a pittance, not nearly as much as brand A?

If you really feel this way, you're just being naive and innocent, and it's not as simple in the grown-up world as it is for the businessman who doesn't get carried away, because brand B often makes more money than brand A.

If you really feel this way, you're just being naive and innocent. Brand B will often be more profitable than Brand A.

How is that possible! It's possible, don't limit the pattern to the profit of a single item, as capitalists we need to focus on the total profit.

Often said: thin profits, profits and sales of this is a very normal phenomenon, the relationship will be drawn into a diagram, about this:

You can see from the figure, the price is reduced - & gt; sales growth, and vice versa.

The large triangle in the graph represents the consumer potential of the entire market, and the blue rectangle represents the profit that the merchant can make. Theoretically, the ultimate goal of everything you do is to make the blue area of the graph large enough, and the larger the blue part of the area, the higher the profit you can make.

Next I'm going to team up with you to take a little bit of a bite out of the market from the merchant's perspective, and our goal is to maximize the size of the blue part of the graph, preferably to fill the entire triangle. Ready? Favorite first don't get lost, the Knowledge app often flashes back.

Suppose we are selling a windbreaker, the cost is ￥ 100, priced at ￥ 600, at this time it is likely that some of the rich consumers psychological price is ￥ 1,000, we are equivalent to the "loss" of ￥ 400, that is, the yellow part of the figure "consumer surplus ";

And vice versa, there are some of the Consumers psychological price is ￥ 400, they will feel that the trench coat is very expensive and choose not to buy, we are equivalent to the "loss" of ￥ 300, that is, the red part of the figure "unnecessary loss ". (Because as long as the price is higher than the cost of business is happy to see a deal)

Of course, there are some consumers in the psychological price of ￥ 100 or less, and we can not do business at a loss, so we can not be sold, that is, the bottom of the white trapezoidal portion of the figure.

Ideally, we will be "consumer surplus" and "unnecessary losses" to get their hands on, you can maximize profits, to achieve this purpose, we need to know the psychological price of each consumer is how much. But it's impossible to ask consumers directly what their psychological price is, and they won't tell us. It's okay, here comes the killer app:

First-level price discrimination

What is "price discrimination"? To put it plainly, it's pricing each consumer separately, and as long as it's above the cost line, the consumer is willing to pay ￥1,000 to sell ￥1,000; the consumer is willing to pay ￥100 to sell ￥100! How is this possible?

It is possible, the most common price discrimination is the "price", a commodity pricing ￥ 1,000, consumers feel expensive, so the price, merchants slowly test the upper limit of consumers, consumers slowly test the lower limit of merchants, and ultimately in a mutually satisfactory price deal, which is the most commonly used means, called "price discrimination ", the disadvantage is that it is very inefficient, the consumer is willing to pay ￥ 1,000, sell ￥ 100.

secondary price discrimination

Since there is a first level, there must be a second level, "secondary price discrimination" is to discriminate by the number of purchases, the most common is the wholesale market, the same thing, buy 100 pieces at a time, it will be discounted by ￥ 5 per piece; if you buy 1,000 pieces at a time, it will be discounted by ￥ 7.... ...This way is very simple and rough and easy to implement, such as supermarkets full of 200 minus 20 also belong to this category.

Three-tier price discrimination

The most common online shopping is "three-tier price discrimination", I do not know if you have thought about it, double eleven preferential rules are so complicated, you have to save up enough points, and then buy enough how much money of the goods, some goods are not involved in the full reduction, with the use of this offer may not be able to use the other offer, but also in the agreed time to start! Grab ...... where such things make people not tired of it, this is why?

Things out of the ordinary must be evil, this must have its ulterior motive.

Take an example, such as this very awesome capsule coffee: think about it, if a person struggles half a day to find a coupon for a long time, and finally to ￥ 19.9 price to buy the original price of ￥ 39.9 of the coffee, then he is most likely to be what kind of people? First of all, the cost of his time is certainly not high, a monthly salary of 30k people, it is absolutely impossible to spend half an hour to figure out how to save ￥ 20, so this person will not have a high income and price-sensitive, then the merchant earned from him "unnecessary losses ";

On the contrary, the cost of time is very high will be a direct buyer of his time is more valuable to the price is not sensitive, the merchant will be from him, the price is not sensitive, the merchant will be from him.

On the other hand, a person with a high time cost will buy directly, his time is more valuable and insensitive to the price, so the merchant earns "consumer surplus" from him.

"Three levels of price discrimination" is pricing by distinguishing between consumers' identity/income/social status ......, and in the age of the Internet we have a very wide range of means to assist in distinguishing between consumers. For example, iPhone users generally have a better sense of payment, people who take a cab late at night near the CBD can generally be reimbursed so they are not price sensitive, people who always fly first class are generally successful ...... This is a very hot topic for a while, "big data kills maturity". . The longer you use an app, the more it becomes aware of the class you're in and where your psychological price point is roughly.

I know a very rich friend, and his oft-repeated refrain is that expensive things aren't necessarily good, but good things are definitely expensive. Then his 'consumer surplus' is very high in the eyes of the businessman.

When the same goods are sold to the rich at a high price and to the poor at a low price, we have a substantial increase in profits, but things become intriguing, such as how did you not give me a like?

If the same commodity ￥ 100 people are willing to buy, ￥ 1,000 people are also willing to buy, then theoretically ￥ 100-1000 between the price of a group of people are also willing to buy, this group of people either ￥ 1,000 high price scared away, or ￥ 100 low price to buy the goods, that the profits have not been maximized, this is as a capitalist how! How can a capitalist tolerate this? So it leads us to the next topic:

Market gap

The following brands you may have heard of:

Helena, a top brand, very expensive;

Lanc?me, a first-tier brand, slightly more expensive;

Beyonce, a second-tier brand, the price of the middle;

L'Oréal, a third-tier brand, the price of the middle;

Minimal nursing care, the end of the brand, the price of the lowest;

Minimal nursing care , an end-of-the-line brand with a very low price.

Besides they are all cosmetic brands, the above brands don't seem to have much other **** in common, people who buy Hélène shouldn't use Little Nurse, and people who use Little Nurse generally don't buy Hélène, so what am I trying to say by listing them together? If you're not in the relevant industry, the following information may startle you:

The above brands belong to the same "L'Oréal (France) Cosmetics Group Company"

It seems magical, but it just happens. Why it happens is because businessmen need to solve the problem of market gap.

The most innocent idea is to assume that if you sell ￥ 20, you make 100% profit; if you sell ￥ 100, you make 900% profit. Written as a formula is:

The cost is a fixed ￥ 10, so we can only adjust the profit margin, and for the efficacy of such a NB product, its profitability depends on how ambitious the person who mastered the formula.

If you are this kind of thinking, unfortunately you are not a qualified capitalist, this kind of thinking is doomed to lose.

Advanced friends, know that if you want to raise the price of goods, you must create scarcity.

Some people want to apply this idea to the formula, only produce a bottle of cream, and then burn the formula, the bottle of cream to auction, will be able to sell a good price!

Such friends are much more open-minded and should be able to make a lot of money. Assuming that we guess the sky, the last bottle of cream in the auction house sold for 100 million, is not a feeling to become a winner in life? But knowing that every L'Oreal product is not as powerful as this bottle of cream, does it mean that the market capitalization of the L'Oreal company hasn't been 100 million?

What should we do then? Review the formula mentioned at the beginning:

What we need to do is how to maximize the total profit in the above equation! We can see that we either need to increase the profit per unit or increase the sales of the product. We can only predict the sales volume can not be controlled, so we have to improve the unit profit as much as possible. But improve the profit per piece and will correspondingly reduce sales, which is the two ends of the scale, want to make both ends at the same time to enhance is very difficult.

What to do? It's okay, we make the product into five sub-brands, to ensure that each price point have our products on the good.

We've found that if you slice the market thin enough, the margins will be high enough! In other words, we could theoretically fill this big triangle! Isn't that a very happy double-tap on the screen?

But the consumer is not stupid, the same thing we sell five prices, consumers of course choose the cheapest, the rich people's money is not the wind blowing. Why? Rich people are not no matter what to buy the most expensive? Hahaha, want to know why please see:

What do you know about the life of the rich?www.zhihu.com

We must artificially create differences in goods if we want to sell high prices. That's what comes next:

How do you create luxury goods?

How can we sell something that was only worth ￥10 to ￥10W? It's simple, but also complex.

First of all, our products should be differentiated enough, such as all the production of mugs with ceramic, because it is easy to shape, then we must not use ceramic, if you find a stone polishing eventually made the form of mugs and ceramic texture, we have completed the first step: differentiation.

Then we have to give this cup a good name, the name is the magic spell, can be y rooted into your soul, for example, you see a kitten on the side of the road, it is just a kitten, and thousands of kittens are not different, but once you give it the name, from then on, it is a part of you, you can no longer break free,this cup! Let's call it "Song Little Lion".

Let's write a story about Song Xiaolishi, for example:

"It takes 127.5 seconds to make a mug go through the whole assembly line, but it took 1,275 days to polish Song Xiaolishi"

"Three years of experimenting with 1,275 kinds of stone, and polishing a Song Xiaolishi with the spirit of craftsmanship"

Add flesh and bone to the story, and perfect it with your heart, so that people can read it and enjoy it.

Add bones and flesh to this story, perfecting it with care, preferably making people laugh or bawl after reading it, and we've accomplished the second step:Emotional Binding.

This cup can not do too much, if you do 100W Song Xiaolishi, the story is not broken, because theoretically that has to be 300W years. Just like with antiques, many people think they're going to spend ten bucks at the grocery store to buy a bowl to leave to future generations, and in a few hundred years the bowl will be worth a fortune. I'm sorry, but that's not possible. Antiques are valuable because they are valuable in their own right, and through the years, the value of those extinct collections is attached to the surviving ones. If you have a night jug at home that was used by your great-grandfather, it is now worth the price of a night jug at best, and more likely worthless. Here we have completed the third step: Rarefaction.

The final step, and the hardest and most important, is to let as many people as possible around the world know that Song is going to sell for ￥10W a piece. We can not sell a piece of clothing to ARMANI's price is because we are difficult to realize this step, because we do not have the right to speak, when enough people know that Song Xiaoshi to sell ￥ 10W a time, Song Xiaoshi is not worried about selling, if this time to cover the plate is not sold, it is even possible to add a few more zeros behind. This is also the most critical step: increase awareness. This is the way to create a luxury product,which is also the way to create a work of art.

Luxury sets finished, and the civilian route is low price, whether you take the low price and low quality route (Yiwu Small Commodity Market) or the cost-effective route (Xiaomi ecological chain), low price is the only kernel of the civilian route!

High price and low price are available, what about the middle part? For a spindle-shaped society, the middle class is a very huge market!

After several sleepless nights, the capitalists had a bright idea of how to deal with the middle class:

Light Luxury: Jump and Reach

Light luxury seems to be a concept that came out of nowhere, but in fact, it has always existed, and we have previously referred to it as a "mid-range and high-end brand". Capitalists did not value this market before, because the middle class has not been the mainstream of Chinese society (the reason, think about it), light luxury brands have always been the rich class do not care to buy, low-income class can not afford to buy the embarrassing existence.

With the middle class slowly becoming the mainstream of society, the concept of "light luxury" was formally put forward, and overnight many brands were transformed into light luxury brands. I have to admit that light luxury is a very good marketing concept, any brand as long as the word "light luxury", it will become a good seller. （

Don't be fooled by the term "light luxury", which is by no means an affordable luxury product. It's a very confusing term, which is a partial phrase, with the definite article being "light" and the central article being "luxury", and we subconsciously focus on the central article. For example, the essence of 'school bag' is 'bag', the essence of 'perfume' is 'water', the essence of 'trench coat' is 'clothes',...... but the essence of 'light luxury' is not 'luxury'.

Thinking about it differently, for example, you usually backpack is Michael Kors (a very representative light luxury brand), one day you go out and find that the street beggars are using Michael Kors, the next day you estimate that you would rather throw the bag also will not be back. The same is true for the affluent class, whatever the brand is, once the middle class can afford it, the affluent class won't bother.

Through the previous narrative, we know that the essence of "light luxury" is a sub-brand developed by merchants to occupy the market in order to maximize profits, simply put, it is a brand class. And the purchase of light luxury goods is the behavior of the middle class eager to draw a line with the bottom class. In modern society, how much a commodity can be sold for is no longer determined by its cost, but by the culture behind it.

What kind of car do you think a rich man drives? Answer Ferrari should account for the majority;

A hip-hop singer usually wear what jacket is likely to AAPE will have a group of fans;

A white-collar lady may spray what perfume?CHANEL Percentage must be very high;
......

Everyone's mind has been a variety of brands

When it comes to shampoo you don't think of shampoo, you think of a certain brand of shampoo;

When it comes to sneakers you don't think of sneakers, you think of a certain brand of sneakers;

When it comes to watches you don't think of sneakers, you think of a certain brand of sneakers;

What kind of perfume might a white-collar woman wear?

When it comes to watches you won't think of watches but of a certain brand of watches ......

Everyone desperately desires to be superior, which is the source of human progress, and there's no denying it. If your classmates/colleagues around you are using a third-tier brand, the business will come up with a second-tier brand and tell you to buy it and you'll be better off. But if this kind of comparison continues, the one who benefits from it will never be the one who compares, it will only be the one who discriminates against us in terms of price.

Finally, does it match? Or is it just a matter of being able to?

When you look at it from a cold perspective, price discrimination is a means of robbing the rich to help the poor. If the rich pay a high price for the same item, and the poor pay a low price for it, the merchants will be more willing to produce more and better goods for everyone to consume if they can make a profit, and this way the overall welfare of the society is increased. Therefore, don't be prejudiced against 'price discrimination', what we should really be alerted to is 'consumerism'.

What is 'consumerism'? In layman's terms, it means letting those consumers who do not have the ability to consume the appropriate goods to do so.

An analogy, if you want to take a plane to travel abroad, do you deserve to sit in first class?

I think the answer should be "yes", as long as there is enough money, of course, we all "deserve" to fly first class.

So I'll ask you again, can you fly first class?

This question probably depends on your salary level. Assuming you make 5k a month, I don't think you'd think you could fly first class. First class is very expensive, and could cost you months of salary, and the purpose of traveling isn't really to be comfortable on the flight, our money could be spent on other entertainment at the destination.

If I were to shoot a commercial for a guy who's been given a hard time by his clients and has had a rough life, and then he goes on a trip and the airline upgrades him, and he finds that the first class cabin is super nice, the seats are very comfortable, and there's super nice and decent care (which is probably what it means, but I haven't been on one), then a subtitle is put at the end that reads:"You've worked hard all year to get here, and you've worked so hard that you'll never have to go back. When you travel and work all year, you deserve a trip to first class.

Maybe the next time you're traveling by plane you'll be thinking: screw it, I'm going first class!

This is the kind of brainwashing that 'consumerism' often does, and they often take the question of 'can you or can't you' and ask you with the question of 'do you deserve it'. You obviously deserve to use big brand bags, you obviously deserve to use more expensive cosmetics, you obviously deserve to sit on a more comfortable sofa, you obviously deserve to live a more exquisite life ......

I hope that before you do all the consumer behavior first ask yourself whether you can buy it, and if the answer is that you can't buy it, then how to do it so that you can "buy it". Or follow me and let me slowly show you how to become 'able to buy'.

Don't ever ask or listen to people who ask you if you're worthy of buying, giving those who ask you that a big slap in the face is what you should do.

To buy or not to buy? That's a question.