When to use Quality/Price Tiers™

Tuscany’s Quality/Price Tier™ methodology enables corporate and franchise service providers to understand and navigate the underlying competitive dynamics of local trade area(s). Tuscany has developed Quality/Price Tiers™ in Early Childhood, Summer Camps, Private K12 Schools, Private Virtual Schools, and Higher Education. This technique is a highly sophisticated form of product benchmarking conducted at the local/territory level. 

Use Cases

• Understand how your services stack up against direct, local competitors.
• Price with confidence
• Analyze price-to-quality relationships to ensure pricing aligns with perceived value.
  Refine positioning to focus on desired customer attributes where you exceed your competition.
• Identify key value drivers that influence customer perceptions across price tiers.
• Enhance differentiation strategies by emphasizing unique strengths over competitors.
• Support go-to-market decisions with data-driven insights on pricing and positioning.

Case Study in Early Childhood Education

For a leading Private Equity group, Tuscany used Quality/Price Tiers™ to support market and company due diligence. We evaluated the strength of the acquisition target’s competitive position for existing and proposed territories, quantified pricing opportunities, and assessed the quality of offerings. When combined with internal and demographic data, this provided a deep understanding of the target’s underlying value and growth potential.

Results: Tuscany’s work confirmed the asset’s value but clarified that there was little opportunity to grow by increasing price. Our work directly led to operational improvements in market positioning, funnel conversion, website content, and school tour modifications.

Quality/Price Assurance (Annual or One Time)

Drawing on our proprietary Quality/Price Tier™ methodology and mystery shopping, we conduct rigorous and reliable quality assessments across early childhood, K12 school, tutoring, learning center, camp, specialized day school, or university campus categories. We assess quality and pricing across dimensions derived from extensive buyer research to provide expert quality assessments.

Use Cases

• Annual Quality Assurance Evaluation
• Enrollment Decline Diagnostics
• New School Pricing Strategies
• New Market Validation & Expansion
• M&A Market & Company Diligence

Case Study in K-12

For a leading early childhood education brand, Tuscany conducted annual Quality/Price Assurances. Tuscany worked systemwide, parterning with corporate and individual franchisees and owner groups. The work led to new pilot progams, measured against control markets.

Results: the work identified specific locations where school-by-school investments were required, leading to sustained, pricing increases 50%+ higher than in control markets without impacting enrollment volume.

When to use Product/Price Benchmarking

We carefully benchmark direct and indirect competitors, creating apples-to-apples comparisons of features, service levels, positioning, claims, price, and discounts. These analyses generate robust insights around pricing, product/market fit, and product features.

Use Cases

• Identify market whitespace for new product offerings
• Uncover gaps in pricing/product strategy
• Increase market share by adding premium, mid-tier, and or budget segments
• Assess market position and product/service competitiveness
• Evaluate feature-to-price ratios to understand value differentiation
• Support high-level pricing decisions with insights on competitive offerings

Case Study in Higher Education

A prominent pre-college art program offered by a leading art college faced ongoing enrollment declines. Tuscany identified top direct competitors and benchmarked price, programs, program structure, faculty, start and stop dates, scholarships, and amenities.

Results: Tuscany’s work enabled the college to restructure the program by changing price, timing, duration, and academic programming leading to YOY Applications increasing by 50% and Matriculations increasing by 60+%.

Mapping Competitor Price Corridors™

For products and services in public education markets (ECE, K12, Higher Ed), we use a combination of competitive quality benchmarking, expert product evaluations, win/loss analyses, qualitative and quantitative buyer research, and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to map how direct competitors go to market and price at scale (e.g. 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100k students). Results foster win rate increases, improved product/market fit, winning pricing strategies, and changes to brand and messaging.

Use Cases

• Create winning price strategies with sales negotiation guidance
• Tighten product/market fit
• Align sales strategies with buyer processes and end-user needs
• Increase market share by adding premium, mid-tier, and or budget segments.
• Assess market position and product/service competitiveness.

Case Study in the K-12 Market

For an established supplemental curriculum provider, Tuscany mapped the Competitor Price Corridors™ for its digital English Language Arts (ELA) (newly acquired product) and supplemental math program offerings. Results rationalized pricing for the two products, benchmarked competitive quality, guided pricing and sales for negotiating large contracts and offered competitive differentiation positioning.

Results: the organization amended its product roadmap and restructured pricing (especially for large student populations) increasing YOY sales for both ELA and Math and win/loss ratios. While branding was not part of our scope of work, the client renamed its entire suite of products following Tuscany’s market insights.

When to use Price Elasticity (with an Auction Model) and Jobs-To-Be-Done Testing™

We bring a high degree of explanatory power to price sensitivity testing, by assessing what prospective buyers are trying to accomplish and how your offerings meet their needs. These insights allow executives to adjust price with confidence and understand product/service gaps that, if addressed, can materially affect revenue and profitability.

Use Cases

• Maximize revenue and/or profitability
• Evaluate purchase behavior to predict consumer respons to price changes
• Evaluate purchase consideration and intent against price levels
• Understand how non-buyers, prospects, and customers perceive your offering’s value.

Case Study in Higher Education

One of the largest private, online universities faced fierce enrollment challenges. Leadership sought to implement a radical strategy to increase volume by becoming the low-cost market leader. The client was aware of brand perception concerns and wanted Tuscany to identify potential barriers to success along with opportunities to improve program positioning.

Results: findings negated the proposed low-cost positioning and demonstrated how prospects perceived the university’s actual value. Tuscany’s work enabled the university to focus on improving product offerings where it had competitive advantage over competitors.