Karan Sood - Director Sales Ops at Rakuten Kobo

Welcome to another episode of our podcast, hosted by Emmanuel Scuto, the CEO and founder of WeYield, the leading revenue management company specializing in the car rental industry.
In this insightful episode of our podcast, Karan Sood, an authority on pricing strategies with a prolific career across various industries including automobiles, Yellow Pages, health products, and currently leading pricing excellence at Rakuten for the Kobo reader, shares his expertise on how even basic items like water or car rentals can be elevated beyond mere commodities into valuable brand assets.

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Key Insights from the Episode:

Understanding Pricing Psychology: Karan explains the dual mental processes that guide our pricing decisions—rapid, instinctual reactions focused on price, and slower, more deliberate evaluations of a product’s value proposition, including psychological influences.
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The Art of Brand Building: Learn why strong brands are cultivated on proprietary platforms and through exceptional service, not merely through third-party brokers. Karan emphasizes that building a brand requires significant time and financial investment.
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Targeted Customer Approach: Instead of trying to appeal to all customer segments at once, Karan advises focusing on attracting either low-value, mid-value, or high-value customers with tailored strategies.
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Loss Aversion: Karan discusses how humans are generally more sensitive to losses than to the prospect of equivalent gains, a critical factor in pricing strategies.

📌 Here's a glimpse into the enriching discussion:

• 0:00:00 to 0:06:00 Introduction of Karan Sood
• 0:06:00 to 0:19:00 100% as pricer in a wide range of sectors
• 0:19:00 to 0:27:40 Everything is a commodity if you leave the space for a commodity
• 0:27:40 to 0:37:55 Do the operators competete on price or on the realvalue proposition?
• 0:37:55 to 0:54:00 Brand building is off the transaction, much earlier
• 0:54:00 to 1:12:00 Understand the "good, better and best" concept
• 1:12:00 to 1:20:00 Do not be shy to do A/B testing in price1:20:00 to the end conclusion