Buffalo Wild Wings’ New Pricing, Service Model Build Brand Confidence

The price at which a product or service is sold in most cases has a crucial impact on the success of a company. When deciding to set a price a company can use several different strategies. The restaurant Buffalo Wild Wings has been in the process of developing a new pricing strategy to improve their margins. Buffalo Wild Wings is a profit orientation company that uses a target profit pricing strategy to meet certain levels of sales. Their previous method of selling chicken wings was to price them according to the number of chicken wings per-serving. However, this method reported a insufficient return on profits and a continued growth in costs, which is not the company objectives. In response Buffalo Wild Wings changed their pricing strategy for wings to prices per serving size (snack, small, medium, and large). This method returned the results the company was looking for and reduced costs by 1.2% at the end of the quarter. I look at this change in the companies pricing strategy as a good decision for them so far because not only did it return ideal results but it put them back on track toward accomplishing their goals. This pricing strategy however could potential have its drawbacks. For instance it is not very customer orientated because their portion sizes (quantity) may not fit all customers wants and needs therefore decreasing the value of what they are getting. Reflecting that price is just half of the value equation and benefit is the other, if the customer does not receive the benefit they once did from the chicken wings then this new strategy has the potential to decrease the overall value of purchasing it. All this being said it is still early in the implementation phase and before any affirmed judgements can be made more time needs to elapse.