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What would happen if you opened a shop and at the checkout asked customers what they would like to pay after telling them the 'retail' cost of the goods they had bought? What if you broke the price down and told them that the farmer / manufacturer would get 20%, the transport and logistics firm 20%, the warehouse staff 5%, the shelf stackers 5%, the checkout operators 5%, the cleaners 5% etc (and the govt their share of course...). Would people pay the full price? Would people pay more because they knew who it was going to?
I'm a general believer in that people care about others, and would be willing to pay the full amount. Some people would pay nothing, but I'd like to think this would be such a small minority that it wouldn't have an effect. Am I being naive? Could it work?
Morrisons do this with milk. You can buy normal £1/4pt bottles, or pay an extra 23p which goes to the farmers (it's the same milk).
There are always the more expensive ones left on the shelves at the end of the day!
I believe this has seen more people go and more revenue.
http://arconline.co.uk/other/news/pay-what-you-decide
The flaw is that it would quickly *attract* people who wanted to pay nothing so you woudl end up with a disproportionate percentage of them in your mix and go bust quickly.
there's a number of co-operative food places (both doing home delivery and with bricks and mortar shops) round here that seem to attract customers but they usually charge a premium rather than undercut mainstream shops.
So the answer from me woudl be: there's a market for people who want to see everyone in the supply chain fairly paid but it's a limited one and they're prepared to pay a premium for provenance.
You would have a few total chancers always. You would start with, possibly, a rump of 'normal' people who would enjoy what you were trying to do and get onboard with it. After a few months these people will slowly revert to type and either shop somewhere else or start reducing the amount they paid. After they'd put you out of business they would spend years saying stuff like "I wonder what happened to Steve" and "I think it was actually a good idea and a nice thing to do" and "why can't more people be like Steve?".
Frankie Boyle summed it up nicely years ago when talking about 'normal' people buying free range chicken. He basically said that they would continue to do so and feel good about themselves so long as their wealth didn't take a hit for any reason. If it did, then the attitude would rapidly change from "happy chickens make me happy" to "I don't care if the only light this chicken ever sees is the light in my oven".
You’d have massive issues if you broke percentages down to every customer for each item they were purchasing. This would result in your shop looking like the queue for Nemesis during the school holidays. Nobody would like that.
Aren't there companies who let you decide if you need to come in or not and you can take as much leave as you want just as long as the work gets done?
Frankie Boyle summed it up nicely years ago when talking about ‘normal’ people buying free range chicken. He basically said that they would continue to do so and feel good about themselves so long as their wealth didn’t take a hit for any reason. If it did, then the attitude would rapidly change from “happy chickens make me happy” to “I don’t care if the only light this chicken ever sees is the light in my oven”.
If anyone remembers the channel 4 (?) documentary where Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsey and Hugh fernly... bred chickens and explained how the caged/barn/free range system worked the result was an increase in free range purchases but also a massive increase in the economy range.
People don’t mind abuse as long as they don’t see it. This pretty much holds for every item we purchase...
when Radiohead did this for an album they made about as much money as they normally would I believe but that was from fans.
Pay what you want only works if people know what you pay. No one wants to be seen as the cheapskate or the thief but make it anonymous and it’s a free for all
i'd get bored and go somewhere else
you can take as much leave as you want just as long as the work gets done?
This was popularised by Californian companies. Unlike most of the us states there is a legal requirement to pay out vacation or carry it over at the end of the year. There is no federal requirement for any vacation to be given. In order to not have to record vacation costs on the balance sheet and hold money in a separate account to cover them if you give people “unlimited” vacation in a culture where 5 days is a long break you can reduce your wage bill and liabilities
I'm guessing that other shops would send trucks round to stock up before bankruptcy struck, which would probably take two months (one day to lose all your money, 60 days for the paperwork to be finalized).
when Radiohead did this for an album they made about as much money as they normally would I believe but that was from fans.
But, of course, there were already ways for people who didn't want to pay the artist fairly to listen to the album for free.
This can work for digital sales because the cost to supply a single 'unit' is minimal, and there's little incentive for someone to claim multiple copies for free. The people taking free copies were probably not going to buy it anyway and are effectively irrelevant.
With physical goods it would be way too easy for a few unscrupulous people to sink the whole thing. Maybe it could work in very small communities.
What if you broke the price down and told them that the farmer / manufacturer would get 20%, the transport and logistics firm 20%, the warehouse staff 5%, the shelf stackers 5%, the checkout operators 5%, the cleaners 5% etc (and the govt their share of course…).
How about if you had a fixed price but customers could choose those percentages? Could be an interesting thought experiment at least.
Humble Bundle does this. They offer various game / ebook etc bundles as "pay what you want." A dollar gets you the first few items, "more than average" (usually around $6) nets you a few more, then a fixed price or higher (maybe $15) gets you everything. When you come to pay you've got sliders where you can divide up the money however you like between the developers, Humble itself and a charity (and there's sub-sliders where you can split further between the different devs and different charities). It's a neat idea, I thought.
Aren’t there companies who let you decide if you need to come in or not and you can take as much leave as you want just as long as the work gets done?
Virgin.
Many years ago I used to run a PYO fruit farm. We had an honesty box and checkout for people who may have eaten more than a reasonable amount. It always had a healthy amount of cash in it at the end of the day.
This can work for digital sales because the cost to supply a single ‘unit’ is minimal, and there’s little incentive for someone to claim multiple copies for free. The people taking free copies were probably not going to buy it anyway and are effectively irrelevant.
The irony of that is people who pirate stuff using that logic.
Then refuse to seed it because they've paid for their broadband bandwidth and don't want anyone else using it.
Many years ago I used to run a PYO fruit farm. We had an honesty box and checkout for people who may have eaten more than a reasonable amount.
Yes, exactly. But on a larger scale. You couldn't have people roll up with trucks obvs, but would people really roll up and take 100 cans of salmon then give £1? Hmm, maybe I guess if they were desperate enough. You wouldn't get any shoplifting though - what would be the point, so maybe that would balance things out? Also cap the maximum wage at 10% above the national average and give any surplus at the end of the year to a local charity so nobody is seen to be profiting the vast amounts that Tescos et al do?
Many years ago I used to run a PYO fruit farm. We had an honesty box and checkout for people who may have eaten more than a reasonable amount. It always had a healthy amount of cash in it at the end of the day.
I bet most of those people that visit your PYO fruit farm are not from the low income area for a day out.
OP's idea only work in community that share the "commune" perspective otherwise people will pay as little as they can.
would people really roll up and take 100 cans of salmon then give £1?
Most people, no. But some will.
There was a story of a hippie shop in San Francisco (think I read it in Tom Cunliffe's Good Vibrations) which was run on a similar principal. One day someone came in and asked for the money in the till to pay their rent as the stores ethos was you could take anything you needed. Then brought it back the next week with an appropriate amount of interest.Presumably it went bankrupt but obviously worked for a time.
There's also that stunt on youtube with the guy walking around NYC with a jacket made of money and a sign inviting people to take it, some homeless guys take some for lunch and bring the change back, then some banker/business guy in a suit takes the lot.