Limited availability or scarcity is a powerful tool to create the premium pricing. There is only one Super Bowl per year with only a fixed number of seats. Tickets prices rise to meet demand. Furthermore, there are only so many ads spots during the Super Bowl. Here again, prices rise to balance out demand. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) places self-imposed limits on oil production to drive up costs.
Pricing your product or service to the relative need of the consumer at a specific moment in time is also a powerful tool to extract the maximum revenue from a customer. Consider what a customer with low blood sugar would pay for your last candy bar, or what someone is willing to pay for your last generator during a blackout, for your snow blower during a major snowstorm, or, my personal favorite, for a pay toilet at Oktoberfest.
How can you create a perception of scarcity to maximize your revenue?
