[CodeWriter23]

It's kind of lazy of you to disclose the Backpack and Chicken Soup cases in a declarative way. You present no references, no drill-down on whether all other effects were equal in these cases. For example, did chicken soup sales continue for an extended period of time and were not driven by other factors such as "a cold going around" or low temperatures? Trust is certainly a factor in consumer behavior, but it nowhere near the sole factor in decision-making that your 'summary' tries to present it as.

You're also lacking cases where the markup is high, 500-2000% is common among a wide range of products, from Fashion to SaaS.

Edit: I'd also add, in the case of food products, if all vendors adopted the transparency strategy, once consumers see typical margins in that industry are in the 5-10% range, suddenly that not-unreasonably-priced organic chocolate bar looks like a high margin item...

[johnsmith4739]

Sorry for the downvotes you get, it's appalling. The whole piece is superficial and riddled with inconsistencies. I guess we can take it as entertainment? It's what non-marketers think a growth marketer does, just put in text form. I'm not here to make friends, but if you state that you got 21% increase, you better show the work. In a world where everybody lies, you better have proof.

[renewiltord]

Honestly, I downvoted because most of the utility in these articles to me isn't the precise number, it's the idea. After all, I don't really care that chocolate bars work this way if I'm selling a SaaS product. I'm going to run the numbers myself.

It's the idea that this could work.

I want to encourage people to honestly communicate ideas to me and I want to discourage people who would discourage those first people.

I explicitly don't want to restrict only the highest-quality research. I want to permit some amount of scamming me.

[schnable]

Text form, with emojis!

[taneq]

> You're also lacking cases where the markup is high, 500-2000% is common among a wide range of products, from Fashion to SaaS.

The article does cover those cases explicitly:

> Extremely high profit margins (>55%) could trigger a negative reaction, although this was not tested.

Basically they didn't even bother because it's pretty clear that someone selling a commodity for a massive markup is not going to benefit from this approach. Of course, that doesn't mean this hypothesis isn't worth testing...

Disclosing your costs if you have a modest profit margin and also modest absolute costs is good signaling on multiple fronts (as long as you're credible):

- Higher parts/ingredients costs are a signal indicating good quality

- Low profit margins make customers feel like they're getting a good deal

- The appearance of transparency signals your own confidence in all aspects of your business

[dimitrios1]

It's also equally lazy for you to demand such an in depth and thorough argument and sources when you can pop into a search browser and do some fact checking yourself. No one owes you anything. This is a discussion board, not a dissertation defense.

[readflaggedcomm]

FWIW, the paper "Lifting the Veil: The Benefits of Cost Transparency" doesn't mention confounding factors like weather or temperature, only the possibility of revealing labor costs. "Fact checking" this study would require reproducing it, not searching the web.

[marcinzm]

>No one owes you anything.

and no one owes the author page views or their time either.

>This is a discussion board

Exactly, we're having a discussion on what the article is missing and why it matters.

[CodeWriter23]

I came up in a time where merit meant something. And this summary literally has no merit at all.