Colin responded to my question about Good Better Best hierarchies: http://colinraney.com/2009/05/hey-ryan-im-so-over-good-better-best/
This was pretty inspiring:
Marketers use the Good Better Best ladder to communicate to a customer which features are valuable and which are premium. The features that appear in the ‘better’ that are absent in the lower model must be ‘valuable’, after all I’m paying more. And the features I want in the ‘best’ model, must be ‘premium’ because I’m paying over and above to purchase them. I just bought a lawn mower this weekend under this exact scenario. I rolled into a Home Depot and used the prices and features of the products to figure out what I wanted and how much I’m willing to pay. I used those features to educate myself around the product (for better or worse). What I would have loved is a lawn mower with a sign that says “if you have a small yard, buy this and you’re all set.”
I think the only way you get out of selling products on a ladder is to think about how consumers consume the products in a context. When you frame things around use and experience, the fact that Starbucks has both a high-end and a low-end offering makes sense; I don’t think consumers only drink coffee in one context. The ironic thing is that the business press is so entrenched in old dogma, they dont’ know exactly what to think about the move, it breaks their model. I think it’s only confusing if you’re hell-bent on a company selling widgets that only work one way.
