My pricing strategy at Zyxware is to price products as cheap as possible with the hope of building volumes and of building market penetration. We offer one of the cheapest prices for laptops in India and as a result we get queries from all over India. Additionally I don't believe in gimmicks like marking up the prices and giving discounts or giving free gifts as I feel that they amount to deception. In spite of all this people still surprise me with their mindsets about seller behaviors.

Today I sold a mid level laptop to a customer who was brought to me by a friend of mine. They had already enquired the prices at another store. Even if they had not, I would normally have asked them to get the prices from at least two other stores before buying from me. The person who bought the laptop was a non-malayalee.

During casual talk with my friend I realized that the other store had quoted a price which was more than 4000 Rupees costlier than the price we were selling the laptop for. I was not at all surprised by this because the customer was not a Malayalee and probably the other store had tried to get the better of the customer. I however was totally taken aback when the customer finally asked I they were going to get a mouse free with the laptop. My answer was clear and simple - No :).

This is what the customer has in store for you irrespective of what you are doing for the customer. I have clearly stated in our company site that our policy is to set the price below which we cannot practically sell our products. This was what centuries of bargaining has done to the typical cusomer mindset. Even if we say that we are different it is difficult to convince the customer. But I am not at all demoralized by this. It is challenging and what is life if things were not challenging :).