Packages and pricing strategies

When home shoppers and home buyers have the chance to see all of a new home's options, the sheer number of choices can get overwhelming. Using Home Personalizer(tm), new home builders can present each room and all the options within those rooms in a detailed, option by option interactive experience but the the result could be staggering to serious shoppers. On the other hand, this comprehensive options layout can easily range into the hundreds of detailed options in the kitchen.

Now new home builders can help home shoppers and buyers deal with that overload by packaging several items together and making that new package a single option product. This isn't completely a new idea as many new home builders will offer one or more appliance packages that include all the separate appliances in the kitchen. Each one of several appliance packages may have a different set of components. For instance, one package might have a cook top and a separate oven but a different package will have a range with its own oven.
Home Personalizer(tm) supports those appliance packages but it doesn't stop there because Home Personalizer(tm) lets the home builder aggregate any number of features into a package. For instance, a professional range may be offered along with its matching cookware, pop up downdraft vent and rear splash. This kind of package makes selecting the entire cooking package easy for the home buyer. Everything that compliments the range is included in the package with a single click.

When it comes to pricing, it is up to the builder on how to handle the details of this range and accessories option product. One strategy is to offer the entire package at a single price. The buyer can inspect all the details about every accessory in the package and also read narratives that explain the benefits of each item in this package for the discriminating chef. The entire package is offered as a single product.

However, another package strategy is to price the accessories and the range separately and still offer the entire option product as a single product at a single price. This could be advantageous for both the home builder and the home buyer because the price of the items can be considered along with their benefits. It increases the transparency and that could make some buyers more comfortable about selecting that option product. Again, although the prices are shown separately, the buyer gets the advantage of choosing a list of items with a single click.

Still another strategy is to allow the buyer to not purchase some items in the package. For instance, the popup downdraft vent may not be needed if an over the range hood is a part of the kitchen design. In that case, the downdraft vent would have its own price and also have "No thanks" option which deletes the downdraft from the package and also removes its price from the full package price. This is a kind of hybrid package that allows for options within it.

Notice that this range and accessories package is just one example of a package in Home Personalizer(tm). Other examples could include many more components that don't need to be in the same product category which is appliances in this case. For instance, the appliances, plumbing, cabinets, counters and floors could all be brought together into a single package. Now new home shoppers and buyers can select an entire kitchen package from a list of kitchen packages. The builder would design each package with a particular design style or life style or price point in mind.

Again, presenting an entire roomful of features into a single option product makes home shopping easier but still retains all the flexibility of item by item option selection. And because all of this is on the public web, home shoppers can have the chance to explore Home Personalizer(tm) packages anytime and anywhere and not be limited to a design studio or other types of options marketing constraints.

In summary, Home Personalizer(tm) packages gives the new home builder and new home shopper the opportunity to get together about the details in a new home in a way that is comfortable and productive for both parties.

Use Case

My job these days is to be sure that software does what people really want it to do. Now please bear with me here because this isn't technical and, besides, everyone already knows that software never does what we want and it's so frustrating for everyone.

Take Twitter for instance. What people really want Twitter to do is make us very popular among the masses. Kind of thumb peck your way to rock star status without even knowing how to play a guitar. But like so much other software, it just doesn't deliver. What actually happens is our kids and our old friends that we never see or talk to all follow our mindless tweets so they know we are still alive and that we still don't have anything interesting to say so there isn't even any point to giving us a call just to check in.

The real final effect of Twitter is to make the cell phone useless as a way of having any real social contact and make us all suckers to that added digital package the cell phone carriers charge us for. They don't charge us extra for talking but Twitter has made talking so, like, totally yesterday. Maybe Twitter is just a big cell phone plot to make us stop using the expensive voice bandwidth that comes with the service and charge us extra for the cheap text bandwidth. Its the same tricky con as bottled water. They've got us believing bottled water isn't tap water even when we know its just the same.

So trying to really figure out what we want software to do and how we use software could be really useful now that we spend a very considerable part of our day just trying to cope with it. One of the popular ways of doing this is to consider 'use cases' which is simply how people use software and what they hope to get out of it. Now I'll admit that use cases does sound about as empty as my tweet about checking the weather report on the Web, so an example might help here.

Take for instance the use case of getting some cash from an ATM. It turns out that this is the standard use case example that was used back in the '80s when the idea first emerged. The concept needs an actor, which is a human, a system which is the ATM and a goal which is grab the cash. Since it helps to have real people in mind along with a real system and a real goal, I'll use my wife as the actor in this example because I know what she does.

In this case, though, the actor (my wife) doesn't have an ATM or a debit card but she still has the goal of getting some cash before she goes to do lunch with important people. So she goes to the nearest ATM-like system which happens to be a small wad of cash I take out of my jeans pocket and dump on the dresser before I go to bed. This works out great for her. The actual steps she takes are 1) she rifles through the cash carefully pulling out the biggest bills and 2) she leaves me with the one's and small change.

However, like all software, there could be glitches in the system. Kind of unexpected things happen that the people that make software have to think about. For instance, maybe I didn't leave enough cash on the dresser or maybe I didn't empty my pockets so the cash will have to go through the laundry first. This kind of thing is called a 'scenario' in use case lingo and scenarios have to be taken into consideration.

In this scenario, the ATM-like system could include my wallet which the actor (Wifey) has to first find and then pillage. Here it is best to realize that actors aren't stupid and can figure out interactions that will achieve their goal even if the default pile of cash doesn't exist. Now to be fair to her, I must say that when she hits the real system jackpot (my wallet), she usually leaves a post-a-note something like, "What depression? I took a $20. I love you." So this scenario works fine, too.

At least it works for her but things could get complicated for me. Consider this next scenario which is where I become the 'actor' and want to 'use' the 'system' which is My Friend Joe, the espresso stand in the downtown quad. Again, in software parlance, this could be considered a 'critical path', or at least I consider it that way. It means that if I don't get a triple espresso right away, I could end up sleeping on the lawn instead of going for another maniacal run. It turns out that they won't take my plastic for the triple espresso and the last $20 isn't in my wallet. So has the 'use case' covered this scenario?

Again, actors aren't stupid and will find more ways to use the system if the system has been designed right. So I whip out my cell and start Twittering, suggesting that everyone following me up to this point immediately donate to the cause of developing even more pointless software – Pay By Twitter - by putting money into my PayPal account. If I'm not going to be a rock star or another Bill Gates, can I figure out a solution to this use case that will support this software cowboy when he's fresh out of coffee-powered brilliance? Surely everyone will want to cash in to the next big thing on the net by sending money now.

But are all my fans going to p(l)ay along? Again, actors aren't stupid except when they are use case designers on a caffeine panic.