The Pricing Guys

S3E13 - The 2 Biggest Pricing Trends Right Now

The 2 Biggest Pricing Trends Right Now
The FIFA World Cup just landed in North America and the attorney general is already involved. Ticket prices surged 35% overnight, seat maps got redrawn, and fans are furious. Michael and Avy use this as the jumping off point for the Season 3 finale and a bigger conversation about the two pricing trends reshaping how companies compete right now.
In this episode:
Why FIFA's price surge might be harder to argue against than the headlines suggest
Why AI-powered dynamic pricing is the trend everyone wants but few are actually executing properly
How the demand for pricing transparency is changing the relationship between buyers and sellers across every industry
Why the most sophisticated pricing strategy falls apart the moment your sales team cannot explain it
See you in the fall for Season 4.

S3E12 - Ferrari's EV Bet and What It Cost Them

Ferrari just dropped an electric vehicle priced at $640K+ and watched their stock fall 8%. What went wrong?
Michael and Avy break down the pricing and brand strategy lessons behind Ferrari's Luce EV launch, and why even the most research-backed innovation can miss the mark when it alienates your core customer.
They cover why expanding your customer base is the hardest growth play in the book, what Post Malone's country pivot has to do with brand dilution, and the one consumer goods company that launched 70 SKUs over seven years and had exactly one turn a profit.
If you're thinking about a new product launch, a new segment, or just whether to mess with what's already working, this one's for you.

S3E11 - Interview with CJ Gustafson

Disney doesn't sell rides. They sell an ecosystem designed to keep you spending as long as possible.
Michael sat down with CJ Gustafson of Mostly Metrics to unpack the surprisingly sophisticated pricing strategy behind the Disney experience. From loss leader ticket pricing and frictionless wristband payments to dynamic lightning lane offers and segmented Florida resident discounts. Sharp observations, real-world parallels to SaaS, and a lot of lessons hiding inside a family vacation.

S3E10 - The Kevin Mitchell Interview

In this special episode of The Pricing Guys, Avy and Michael welcome Kevin Mitchell, President of the Professional Pricing Society (PPS), for a candid conversation about the past, present, and future of pricing.
Kevin traces the roots of PPS back to his father Eric Mitchell, who did pricing work for Ford, Xerox, and Intel before launching the society out of a newsletter Kevin used to print and mail as a kid. Nearly 20 years after rejoining the family business, Kevin now leads the world's largest community of pricing professionals and has a front-row seat to how the discipline is evolving.
The conversation covers the classic 1% pricing rule and why most executives still underestimate it, how BOGO promotions in consumer goods erode long-term price integrity, and where AI fits into the pricing toolkit today. Kevin shares memorable examples of algorithmic pricing spiraling out of control and makes a strong case for keeping humans in the loop on decisions that matter.
He also draws an unexpected parallel between the music industry and pricing strategy, and closes with a straightforward challenge to anyone looking to grow as a pricing leader: get out of the silo, learn the language of every department, and be a generalist with specialist knowledge.
A thoughtful and energizing episode for anyone in pricing, revenue management, or commercial strategy.

S3E9 - The Big Slice

What can a New York City dollar slice teach you about pricing strategy? Quite a bit, it turns out.
In this episode, Michael and Avy use pizza as a lens to explore real-world pricing dynamics: the volume game behind the dollar slice, how atmosphere and customer segments justify price gaps, and why brands have to commit to a single pricing identity. They also make the case that Dave Portnoy's One Bite Reviews are missing a critical data point.
If you think about price, value, and what customers are really paying for, this episode will give you a few new ways to think about it. Plus, a future episode rating pizza on a price-adjusted scale may be coming.

S3E8 - Heinz Proved It. Can You?

What does ketchup have to do with brand value? More than you'd think.
Michael and Avy dig into one of the most underrated questions in pricing: when you strip away the logo, the mascot, and the packaging redesign, what is your brand actually worth? The Heinz story out of Turkey is the jumping off point, but this episode goes much deeper into why so many companies are spending millions to justify their existence instead of their value.
In this episode, Michael and Avy get into how Heinz drove a 23% sales increase without a price hike or a new product, why brands confuse logo refreshes and flavor adds with actual value creation, the slotting fee trap that CPG companies keep falling into and why the payback math almost never works, what base velocity actually tells you about whether your marketing spend did anything, why the brand is the product and not the color of your label, and how Coca-Cola quietly gets this right while everyone else chases shiny objects.
Also, keep your eyes open for the new RML website dropping in early May. Drop your thoughts in the comments.
What brands do you think have done the best job justifying their premium? Subscribe for Season 3, new episodes dropping regularly. #PricingStrategy #BrandValue #CPGPricing #ThePricingGuys #PricingPodcast #MarketingROI #FMCG #BrandEquity #RevenueStrategy #PricingTrends ‪@heinz‬

S3E7 - Is Your Grocery App Spying On Your Wallet?

Is your grocery app charging you more than your neighbor? Welcome to surveillance pricing.Avy Punwasee and Michael Stanisz break down the pricing practice that's got Ontario Premier Doug Ford talking and consumers quietly fuming. Surveillance pricing (aka AI-powered price discrimination) is already happening on grocery apps, and the debate over whether to ban it is heating up.But here's the thing: dynamic pricing has existed in airlines, hotels, and B2B for years. So why does seeing different banana prices on Instacart feel different?In this episode, Avy and Michael get into what surveillance pricing actually is and why it sounds scarier than it might be, Doug Ford's free market take on whether government should even get involved, why airlines have done this forever and nobody bats an eye, the grocery app paradox of whether you're paying more for the bananas or just the convenience, how AI shopping agents are about to flip the dynamic on sellers, B2B's dirty secret that discretionary discounts are just surveillance pricing with a friendlier name, and where Michael and Avy actually land on free market vs. regulation.
Learn more - revenueml.com

S3E6 - The Future of Pricing in an AI World

What does "price" even mean in a world run by AI?
In this episode, Michael and Avy skip the near-term AI hype and fast-forward 10 to 15 years to ask the big questions. Are promotions obsolete? Will brands live or die by their ability to communicate value to an algorithm? And is B2B pricing about to go completely underground?
From shopper bots that buy your toilet paper at the optimal moment, to the NVIDIA CEO's take on the true cost of an AI-powered engineer, this is a wide-ranging and thought-provoking look at the long game of pricing in an AI-saturated world. Come for the predictions, stay for the debate, and check back in Season 15 to see how right they were.
#PricingStrategy #AIAndPricing #FutureOfPricing #ThePricingGuys #PricingPodcast #ArtificialIntelligence #B2BPricing #PricingTrends

S3E5 - The Change Management Problem in Pricing

Are pricing teams their own worst enemy? 
In this episode of The Pricing Guys, Michael and Avy are calling out a growing trend in the pricing community: a victim mentality showing up all over LinkedIn, where pricing professionals feel undervalued, ignored, and like they're the only ones driving results in their organizations.
But here's the hot take: if no one's listening to you, that might be on you.
Michael and Avy break down why the best pricing professionals aren't just Excel wizards. They're change agents, relationship builders, and communicators who bring their stakeholders along for the journey from day one. They share real-world consulting experiences, the powerful "seven times rule," and lessons from a fireside chat at a major private equity conference on why trust-building is the real unlock for organizational change.
Whether you're a pricing veteran or just getting started, this episode will challenge your mindset and give you a fresh playbook for making real impact.
What's covered:
The LinkedIn "pricing victim" trend and the hot take you might not want to hear
Change management vs. spreadsheet perfection
Getting stakeholders involved early (and why it matters)
Relationship-first leadership lessons
How to shift from victim to change agent
Have a topic you want us to cover? Send it in!
#ThePricingGuys #Pricing #PricingStrategy #RevenueManagement #ChangeManagement #B2B #CommercialExcellence #RML
 

S3E4 – Why Did Target Remove Prices From Tags?

Have you ever picked up a piece of clothing in a store and noticed the price tag was... blank? Target made headlines when they quietly removed price points from tags on select clothing items, and the guys are unpacking what's really going on.
In this episode, we dig into the operational reasoning Target offered (spoiler: it involves tariffs and cost volatility), and why that explanation doesn't fully add up. We explore the real cost of price tag labor, the friction this creates for shoppers, and whether removing visible pricing is actually a slippery slope toward full dynamic pricing in brick-and-mortar retail.
We also draw parallels to the world of B2B and software pricing, from "contact sales" enterprise deals to distributors who hide their list prices from the open market, and ask the bigger question: when you hide your price, what signal does that send to your customer?
Key topics covered:
Target and Walmart's removal of price points from clothing tags
Price transparency and the customer shopping journey
Dynamic pricing in retail: is this where we're headed?
The hidden cost of creating friction at the shelf
B2B pricing opacity: commodity markets vs. value-added products
Digital price tags and what the future of in-store pricing could look like
Whether you're in retail, B2B, or SaaS, the core lesson is the same: before you hide your price, make sure you've weighed the operational savings against what it costs you in customer trust and lost sales.
#PricingStrategy #RetailPricing #DynamicPricing #PriceTransparency #Target #Retail #B2BPricing #SaaS #ThePricingGuys #Podcast #Ecommerce #PricingPodcastMore pricing insights can be found here - https://revenueml.com/insights