Why Your Customers Fixate on Price—and What You Can Do About It

For CEOs and marketing leaders at small to mid-sized B2B companies, few challenges are more frustrating than hearing from a potential customer, “It’s just too expensive.” Especially when your solution is more advanced, more thoughtful, and delivers better long-term outcomes than lower-priced competitors.

In today’s saturated markets, price fixation isn’t just common—it’s a symptom of a deeper issue. According to marketing scholars Marco Bertini and Luc Wathieu, many customers operate in a “commoditized” state of mind. They assume the options in the market are all interchangeable, innovations are negligible, and the fastest way to a decision is to pick the option that is cheapest or closest to the cheapest.

But there’s good news. You can use pricing—yes, pricing itself—to re-engage customers and steer the conversation away from cost and toward value. Here are three practical pricing strategies, drawn from Bertini and Wathieu’s research, that your team can consider today.

1. Align Pricing Structure with Customer Value

Too often, pricing is treated as a tactical lever rather than a strategic tool. Today, many B2B companies still price based on a cost-plus model, unintentionally training customers to shop on price. A better approach? Price based on the value your offering delivers.

This is especially true for innovation, which often lives in the details—enhanced reliability, smarter data analytics, flexible integrations, longer lifespans. The problem? Those details get lost when your pricing looks the same as everyone else's in your category.

That’s why restructuring your pricing—how you charge, not just how much—can be a powerful way to underscore innovation. One standout example is Goodyear, which once struggled to command premiums for their innovation in creating a longer-lasting tire. Customers, unfamiliar with how to value engineering advancements, defaulted to price comparisons. So Goodyear changed their price structure: instead of pricing by model, they priced by expected mileage. Suddenly, the innovation became more visible and relevant—miles meant value.

For B2B companies launching new solutions, consider this: if your innovation leads to more efficiency, lower downtime, or reduced risk for your customer, can you reframe pricing around those benefits?

The key is to use pricing to anchor your value story in something the customer feels, measures, or directly benefits from. This takes your offering out of commodity territory and places it squarely in the value conversation.

2. Partition Your Pricing to Spotlight Value

Bundling is convenient—but it’s also dangerous if it buries your differentiators. When buyers see a single lump sum, they can often skip past evaluating the full value they’re receiving. Partitioned pricing, however, can spark greater attention from customers and drive deeper evaluation of your offering.

For B2B companies, unbundling line items like onboarding support, advanced analytics tools, or API access can help clients understand the full scope of what they’re getting—and why it’s worth more.

This tactic becomes especially relevant when introducing innovation:

• If you’ve added a powerful new analytics dashboard to your existing platform, break it out in pricing—even if you still bundle it in total.

• If a support model now includes AI-assisted self-service and 24/7 live expert guidance, consider showing both components in a tiered breakdown.

The goal isn’t to nickel-and-dime clients—it’s to slow down their decision-making process just enough for them to register your innovation. In fact, research shows that people are more likely to value features when they’re called out explicitly in price, even if they’re not optional.

When done well, price partitioning shifts attention from the total cost to the value of each component. Just be transparent—hidden or mandatory fees can backfire and damage trust.

3. Use Flat Pricing to Shift Focus from Cost to Fit

When buyers are offered multiple variations of a product or service—especially in a complex B2B environment—they typically use price as a shortcut. A tiered price list tells customers that more features equals more money. And unless they’re fully engaged, they tend to default to minimizing spend.

But what happens when the options are priced the same?

Surprisingly, it forces buyers to focus on what best fits their needs instead of what’s the cheapest. A classic example is Apple’s flat pricing on iTunes ($0.99 for all songs), which helped users focus on their content preference versus the pricing mechanics—ultimately leading to higher engagement and purchase volume.

In B2B, this principle can support innovation adoption:

• When rolling out a new service tier, consider launching it at the same price as existing tiers for a limited time. This invites comparison on merit, not cost.

• Offer multiple configuration paths for implementation or support at a single flat rate to keep buyers focused on fit.

Uniform pricing is especially useful during early-stage innovation rollouts when you want to maximize exposure and learning over maximizing short-term margin. It positions your offering as thoughtful, fair, and customer-centric—all while encouraging a deeper value conversation.

Stop the Race to the Bottom

Discounts and promotions are tempting ways to win business. But as research shows, they reinforce price sensitivity and commoditize your offer even further. If your customers are fixated on price, the worst thing you can do is fuel that focus.

Instead, flip the script. Use pricing strategically to reengage buyers, highlight your strengths, and reframe the conversation around value—not cost.