Today I went to visit a tulip festival and it required a ticket to enter. Not surprisingly, the ticket price is cheaper on weekdays at $10 each and on weekends it was $15 each. That is normal as you would expect a lot more people on the weekends. Now why this got me thinking is that when I was there today there wasn’t that many people at all. It was probably at about ten percent capacity. Usually, ticket prices would go up due to demand. But in this case it seemed to be simply capitalizing on the fact that people on the weekend are willing to pay more because it’s their day off from work.
I noticed that it’s mainly smaller businesses that do this more often. For example, I know restaurants that bump up its prices during weekends and no one seems to notice or care. You wouldn’t really be able to do that with a larger well-known company as an example. But it’s interesting to see the techniques that many smaller business do in order to generate more revenue.
Would you actually consider that a smart or unethical move as well? I think the only time I can remember where I strongly felt that changing a price was out of line was when a manager at a large retail store decided to increase the price of a DVD by about fifty cents. This was an advertised item too where most people didn’t even notice the change and as a result the store was able to make more profit. I suppose some would just see that as smart as well.