Mark Stiving, writing for Upstream Commerce, offers a lot of useful tips for using prices as differentiators for different shoppers.

Here are some highlights from a recent Stiving article:

“Are you tracking what each customer buys? Are you using that data analysis to help you define and offer discounts? If not, you should be.”

“Search your data to find two items that many people buy together. Then, when someone who historically only buys one of these items comes back to the store, offer them a discount for the other.”

“Search your data for people who intermittently buy some quantity of a product. Offer them a discount if they buy double the amount.”

“Identify customers who usually buy a specific brand of a product. Sell the ‘ability’ to a competing brand, to offer a discount. For example, if someone usually buys Lay’s potato chips, Pringle’s might pay to offer a discount to entice customers to switch.”

“Every business is different, but the lesson for segmentation is start with the ‘right’ price, then offer discounts for acceptable reasons, such as loyalty – try to get them to buy more of one item, get them to sample a related product, or to try a similar, but competing item.”

Click the image for Stiving’s full article.