Did I pay a fair price for this book?
From Amazon
Yes,but I did get this from the library. This book confirmed my unease that I, and apparently most other people, really cannot clearly establish what anything should cost. It is bad enough at the supermarket (are organic or free trade items really worth that much more?) but even worse with larger items bought less frequently (airline flights, appliances). And for once in a lifetime events - a jury deliberating on a major civil lawsuit, forget it.
The author pulls out many fascinating nuggets behind the art and science of assigning pricing, and how psychology, and those who understand and harness it, can mislead the consumer.
My only fault with this book is that it consists of 50-60 somewhat unconnected chapters. Condensation and editing of the material would raise its price.
Plenty of pricing 'psychophysical' concepts to consider
From Amazon
The standout feature of Priceless is the number of pithy chapters that communicate complex research and the many variations of the 'psychophysics' of pricing.
Some are obvious. You might pat yourself on the back for having intuited the 'right price' to discover that there is a `scientific' basis for your intuition.
Typical large and small consumer examples are plentiful and the complex science behind pricing them is well presented.
It was my hope that perhaps more complex pricing science might be revealed for improving my pricing decisions within more complex, technical and B2B environments.
Oh well, I'll just have to keep on intuiting and keep hoping the customer buys it.
5 stars as a quick biz read. Superbly transcon airplane flight readable. Priceless is very current in its examples (Zillow pricing implictions are explored). If you see it before a long flight ... buy it.
Only 4 stars overall for its intercept with my pre-purchase expectations of its utility to my purpose.
Googled together?
From Amazon
From "The recursive Universe" (1984) till "Fortune's Formula" (2005), I am a longtime mostly happy reader of Poundstone. This time, I'm not.
The present book is a loose collection of newspaper like items, 57 in total and grouped into four parts. Nowhere in the book I found an explanation
what the parts stand for. Nor is there any introduction explaining the structure of the book or its goals. Neither is there any conclusion at the end.
Googling the internet on Kahneman, Tversky and Thaler would probably catch 80 percent of the contents, if not more. But Poundstone did that for me.
Is it worth its price? According to Max Bazerman, Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School on the backflap:
"If you can get this book for under $100, grab it! After you read it, you will better understand why the price you paid felt like a bargain".
I got the book for $17.81 (march 2010). Given the set anchor and the priceless project theory, I should feel happy. But I don't.
Which could explain why its current (may 2010) price is under $15.
Well wrtitten, entertaining, and informative
From Amazon
I found the book to be well written, entertaining enough that i finished its 336pp in three evenings of enjoyable reading. I read some of the other less than stellar reviews and would wholeheartedly disagree with those critics on the value of this book. It simply proposes to tell one of how marketers use various gimmicks to control prices, and some of these are in subliminal manners. I was never under the guise that this book was meant to be considered a course in price theory, which would be a junior level course in a pursuit of a bachelors degree with a major in economics, but some readers might have thought that reading this one book would prepare them to challenge Greenspan or Summers on economic theory. We all have our biases and prejudices in all areas of life, and PRICELESS helps to explain how and why we may feel in a certain way about the price of Gucci bag, a pair of Jimmy Choos, and etc. The evidence provided is primarily anecdotal and not meant to be an all encompassing erudite study in economics. If you want to read a very entertaining book on how many large marketers decide to set what they consider to be their optimal prices for their various products then add this book to your reading list. If you want to become an economic expert, I would suggest enrolling in an institution of higher learning and expecting to take four years of concentrated study in that area before you even think of grad school. I liked this book enough that I bought additional copies for each of my kids, so that should say how much I liked it.
Very interesting
From Amazon
I saw this book in the bookshop and bought it because not too long ago I read a book called "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely which was very good and interesting and this book seemed to be about the same sort of thing. It is about what sort of things influence the price people are willing to pay for goods and services etc, and how the human mind sometimes subconsciously tricks us into being influenced by factors we are not aware of. The book has details of a lot of experiments to illustrate it's points throughout. Really it is very interesting and easy to read. I read it in the space of a day.
The main thing that I didn't like about the book was that it was very similar to Dan Ariely's book. It uses many of the same examples as has much of the same subject matter. I guess it is not surprising that the subject matter and examples were similar because the books are about the same subject. I guess if i were to buy a book about introductory physics, for example, and then purchased another one, then the content would be similar and might use the same examples. So I guess all i am saying is that it's a really good book but if you already have Dan Ariely's book then this one may not add too much to what you have already read!!