Pricing advice?

[DMAN222]

I'm fairly new to this game. Put in about 6 hours and I've got a lvl 16 shop. I am wondering what the current theory (or meta if it is known) is regarding pricing. Currently, I base it off of market value and try to barely undercut it. If market value for blue dice is 18.36 I would price them at 17.99 in my shop, for example. Or if a card is worth 27.85 I would sell it at 26.99. Basically rounding to the next dollar down and subtracting a penny. I try to be closer than that for lower price item like the card packs where I try to stay within 5-10 cents below market. Also I am guessing these virtual customers aren't psychologically manipulated the way some real people are when seeing a price ending in .99 and I have just been making check out more tedious for no reason? I did just hire an employee to do that though so I suppose it isn't a worry anymore. Thanks in advance!

[Kyouko Tsukino]

The closest to market price you go, the more chances customers have to buy the items they come looking for.

That's it. There's no other mystical method to be found. If you want 100% chances to sell, sell at market price. Any lower is an actual waste of potential profit.

[Dwarfmp]

I think the most common trend is to take the market price and add 10%, you can't go wrong there.

[Itsabouttime77]

Couple things. I am a big proponent of rounding to the nearest dollar. Really doesn’t impact sales and it makes transactions faster and cleaner - especially when you hit higher levels and have employees running the registers. Unlike the regular world where pricing strategies ending in .99 or .95 impact consumer spending - it doesn’t in this game.

Someone did an analysis and essentially if you want to make the most money price your items at +10% and if you want to max XP price your items at -10% or lower.

[Penguin]

I go +20% for items and +10% for cards

[The Watching Shadow]

Originally posted by Itsabouttime77:

Couple things. I am a big proponent of rounding to the nearest dollar. Really doesn’t impact sales and it makes transactions faster and cleaner - especially when you hit higher levels and have employees running the registers. Unlike the regular world where pricing strategies ending in .99 or .95 impact consumer spending - it doesn’t in this game.

Someone did an analysis and essentially if you want to make the most money price your items at +10% and if you want to max XP price your items at -10% or lower.

Are you talking about this guide or something else? https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3342881996

Since I have an older version of Excel I can't use the function VLOOKUP that is currently used in that file, but I tweaked my own copy to use nested if functions (pain in the ass...) to check on various items that intrigue me.

I've used it at times to check what it would say for the current average purchase price and market value for the rare destiny box in particular (it's been my main profit item for some time now). Oddly, it ends up saying each time to best price to sell at is market value itself. This is based on factoring the possibly profit by the chance the customers would buy at that price which factors down some of the higher possible profits.

At market value it's a 90% chance they'll buy it and at 20% less than market value it's supposed to be 100% chance they'll buy it (assuming they choose to go to that shelf and the item with how they work...there's another guide for that).

I sunk a lot of hours into this before I dug into that guide and for all of that time I spent I had pretty much always priced items rounded up to the nearest dollar from market value (it's a pain to check/update it each day) and been getting what I feel has been a decent daily profit (between $4k-$8k/day...depending on how much I buy from customers or overstock). I don't bother with selling singles and usually have 4-6 tables going (I've varied it to see how sell profit/traffic flow changes).

I'm not really running the most optimum shop, to be honest. I've been adding screenshots as I've tweaked my layout if you're curious.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that rounding up to the nearest dollar doesn't work as well when market value is in the $2-$4 range. Those ones I just round down to the nearest dollar of market value. I usually have keep stock of them (sleeves/lower type packs) to draw interest of customers who may have them on their list that day/week.

EDIT 2: These are some of the screenshots I was referring to if you're curious (no mods, have all store expansions - main and shop b, and all employees now).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3402503634

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3402502687

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3401613777

Up to you how you want to run things!

[Itsabouttime77]

Originally posted by The Watching Shadow:

Originally posted by Itsabouttime77:

Couple things. I am a big proponent of rounding to the nearest dollar. Really doesn’t impact sales and it makes transactions faster and cleaner - especially when you hit higher levels and have employees running the registers. Unlike the regular world where pricing strategies ending in .99 or .95 impact consumer spending - it doesn’t in this game.

Someone did an analysis and essentially if you want to make the most money price your items at +10% and if you want to max XP price your items at -10% or lower.

Are you talking about this guide or something else? https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3342881996

Since I have an older version of Excel I can't use the function VLOOKUP that is currently used in that file, but I tweaked my own copy to use nested if functions (pain in the ass...) to check on various items that intrigue me.

I've used it at times to check what it would say for the current average purchase price and market value for the rare destiny box in particular (it's been my main profit item for some time now). Oddly, it ends up saying each time to best price to sell at is market value itself. This is based on factoring the possibly profit by the chance the customers would buy at that price which factors down some of the higher possible profits.

At market value it's a 90% chance they'll buy it and at 20% less than market value it's supposed to be 100% chance they'll buy it (assuming they choose to go to that shelf and the item with how they work...there's another guide for that).

I sunk a lot of hours into this before I dug into that guide and for all of that time I spent I had pretty much always priced items rounded up to the nearest dollar from market value (it's a pain to check/update it each day) and been getting what I feel has been a decent daily profit (between $4k-$8k/day...depending on how much I buy from customers or overstock). I don't bother with selling singles and usually have 4-6 tables going (I've varied it to see how sell profit/traffic flow changes).

I'm not really running the most optimum shop, to be honest. I've been adding screenshots as I've tweaked my layout if you're curious.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that rounding up to the nearest dollar doesn't work as well when market value is in the $2-$4 range. Those ones I just round down to the nearest dollar of market value. I usually have keep stock of them (sleeves/lower type packs) to draw interest of customers who may have them on their list that day/week.

EDIT 2: These are some of the screenshots I was referring to if you're curious (no mods, have all store expansions - main and shop b, and all employees now).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3402503634

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3402502687

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3401613777

Up to you how you want to run things!

That’s the one.