Different prices for different countries, experiences?

I have a website which experience about 50/50 US/India traffic.
My price is set for the US market and I see very few purchases from India.

My product is digital so I was flirting with the thought of making my price lower for visitors located in India.
I was wondering if anyone have any experiences with this approach or any suggestions?
Are there any pitfalls I should consider?

 

Are you suggesting two price ranges based solely on location of clientele? If so how do you feel that the Americans who will be left with the higher prices will respond? I'm from N.A., would this mean that I would be forced to pay higher prices?
If this were the case I would drop you like a hot potato.

 

Hmm I think you have to be careful with this idea. Like spoiltdiva says above if half of your potential customers realised you were charging them more because of country Im guessing they wouldnt be too pleased with you. I appreciate in the "physical" world this happens and the cost of same goods are different depending on what country etc but I'd still be careful.

Im not an expert on the way proxys work but my understanding is that it can show you and your IP address from a different country and if that is the case then you run the risk of everyone buying at the lower rate.

 

Well said, and this is precisely what would happen.

 

I thought that was the case - it was one of those things which I may have read about or may have dreamt about and been complete fantasy!

 

I would like to say that you cant do that.... but if you were to do it, I think its better to offer legitimate coupons on sites that are primarily indian users...but then again, coupons should be part of your marketing strategy in the first place.

@spoilt, how do you think we Aussies feel about the prices we have for many US based products? Someone worked out that the cost of the adobe products to Australians is clearly a ripoff, to the point where they could fly to the US, buy all of the software they needed, stay the night, fly back, and still have change left over. (and no, local taxes dont account for the massive price hike either). Its not just one thing, there are other examples of times when we have to bleed dry for products simply as we are Australian.

Odds are, this guy is only going to be charging a few dollars extra (still doesnt make it socially acceptable though)

 

We have the exact same issue here in Canada.

 

Firstly, thank you for your feedback.

I was very unsure whether it would be a good idea or not. My primary thought behind the price difference is that an average US visitor has a significantly higher monthly salery than the average Indian user.
The price difference is rather low already I was considering $3 instead of the usual $8 I charge.
If someone would go through the trouble of faking their IP to be Indian I must admit I can live with that.

I am still very unsure whether to continue, to be honest I almost find it unfair that Indian users have to pay the same as their average salary are such much lower. But I understand my US customers may not see it the same way, if they would find out

 

Many companies do set their pricing like this - take Valve for example. The price difference of the exact same digital product is usually completely different in US/EU/Asia.

Personally I wouldn't go for this approach, but either keep the price as it is or lower it for everyone. That, or find a new middle ground. But then again, everything is cheaper in 3rd world countries, and countries where the average salary is low, so double pricing is understandable.

 

Hi, you can create call to action buttons using Optimize Prress tool. But not sure about country wide pricing. I think you need to do some custom programming.

 

Living in the UK, we are quite often subjected to higher prices that online retailers (often for digital goods) seem to want to charge people in the UK/EU vs USA.

Quite often $1 is translated to £1 or €1, making the price substantially more than if we simply purchased in dollars. When I see that kind of thing going on, I will do absolutely anything and everything to purchase in dollars and take advantage of the lower price. It also seriously effects the standing of the company in my eyes - one that comes to mind are Zend (developer of PHP tools), who do exactly that. People in the EU pay €600 for a product they charge $600 others for (about 32% more). I've never paid the € pricing, and after my first purchase, never purchased anything again!

One of the recent high profile examples I can think of was with SimCity and India - http://www.examiner.com/article/electronic-arts-pulls-simcity-from-india-s-origin-service - EA eventually pulled SimCity from the store because people from around the world were finding ways to take advantage of the much lower pricing available vs what they wanted in their local currency.

I think that what you will find, is that if people know they can get a cheaper price, they'll find a way to take advantage of that. I'd therefore suggest regional discounted pricing isn't worth it - you'll alienate customers who might be unhappy and probably lose income as people find a way to take advantage.

 

Once again, thank you for all your feedback.

I consider still experimenting with a discount for Indian customers for a limit time to see if there is actually a difference in sales. If I do go ahead with this I'll return to digitapoint with my results.

 

What you could do is just use different currencies which will enable you to vary pricing as most people don't know the currency rates by hard.

For India / US I don't know if this is a possible option.

 

First you survey Indian Market which item you offer. Indian Public is very smart and calculative so when you think about indian market to survey deeply about that and also compare the other thing. I think if you once comfort with Indian market than you have no problem for purchase from India.