Posted by: ianharm
on Apr 26, 2010
Tagged in: Untagged
I hear this said time and time again, my mother and father used to live by the philosophy and at times I have even heard myself saying it.
But is it really true?
Competing on Price Alone
The other side of the coin is that you don’t necessarily get better quality services by paying more (despite what Mam and Dad told me). Choosing any services based on a high price alone is equally never a good idea. We all know the pitfalls of choosing cheap services but not many people know the negative points of choosing the most expensive service provider without taking into consideration a whole host of other factors.
Big Investment
For example, any business that has the capability of huge financial investment be it by borrowing from financial institutions or seeking help from private investors can make themselves appear a large corporate enterprise. Firstly they may invest in plush offices at a substantial cost. Also, investing a large sum in a professionally designed website costing thousands of pounds and paying for large adverts in the top slots of directories costing many thousands of pounds can certainly give a favourable impression to a potential client-base. An impression that says, ”we are the professionals come to us”.
This type of marketing can be successful as generally it is felt, by some potential clients, that anyone that has plush offices, a flash website and a big singing and dancing advert in Yell.com must be good. I wonder how many people have found that this is not really the case, much to their cost.
A matter of Image Rather Than Substance
For me this is image rather than substance in many instances. The marketing creates a favourable image but quite often the business can not provide the resources to live up to that image. Therefore the service-provider has no real substance.
Have you ever stopped to think that all this ‘outbound’ marketing investment has to be recouped in some way before any profit can be made by the business? So, these businesses have to charge accordingly to cover their overheads, to provide you with the service and to make a profit for the business. My feelings are that this type of marketing activity adds nothing to the value of the services; it does however add a substantial cost to the consumer.
The real objective when choosing a service provider has to be, ‘where pricing meets quality’ therefore providing the customer with value for money.
Choose Wisely
When choosing any service provider it is important to see beyond the marketing hype. Look at the people behind the business. What is their experience and what qualifies them to offer the services that they state they can provide? What portion of the fee that you are paying goes to addressing the overheads of their business and what portion are you paying for the skills and resources of the service provider?
- What do you look for in a service provider?
- Do you base your buying decision solely on cost?
- Is your buying decision based on flash websites, large adverts and plush offices?
