Tag Archives: price Comparison

Can a positive review be a bad thing?

Today on my Facebook feed a post came up from Nutrilite US about Nutrilite Energy Bars getting a positive review in Triathlete Magazine –

“That’s great!” I thought. I’ve competed in triathlons and have a few friends who continue to do so. So I eagerly clicked on the link through to Amway’s News website and looked at the PDF of the Triathlete Magazine Review.

The magazine highlights four energy bars for “when you need an extra shot of energy to keep going on a long ride or run”. The four are Honey Stinger Waffles, Iron Girl Energy Bar, Nutrilite Energy Bar, and Clif Bar. All four are given glowing reviews, which is great for Nutrilite. So where’s the problem? There’s two. First is this –

Honey Stinger Waffles – $1.39
Iron Girl Energy Bar – $0.99
Nutrilite Energy Bar – $20.97 for box of 9 bars
Clif bar (coconut chocolate chip) – $1.39

You have to do the math, but that puts the Nutrilite Energy Bar at  $2.33/bar – nearly 70% more expensive than the next most expensive bar, and 135% more expensive than the cheapest!

If you were a triathlete, would you check out the Nutrilite bar first or last? Now, I’ve learned a lot over the year about The Nutrilite Difference, and often even though a Nutrilite product may be more expensive, it may be a significantly better product and better value. We don’t have Nutrilite Energy Bars where I live and so I’ve never tried them and don’t know much about them. So I went to Amway.com to learn more. And that’s where the second problem came up –

Hopefully it will change soon, but right now two of the three flavours, indeed the two that were mentioned by Triathlete Magazine, aren’t even available! Hello? Even if you can’t help when Triathlete magazine promotes something, why on earth would you be promoting a product on Facebook that people can’t even order? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to wait until the products were in stock?

In any case, I went to amway.com to see if I could learn more about these bars and if there was any information to help a consumer make the decision to purchase these over the other three bars, or indeed for an IBO to market these products against competitors. Unfortunately, under “competitive info” I found only some nutritional comparisons with Power Bar. Reading through the rest of the info the only thing that stood out was “Exclusive NUTRILITE® C-Lenium Blend provides antioxidant protection from harmful free radicals generated by intense exercise”.

Was that the Nutrilite Difference? I don’t know. It sounds good – but is it worth paying more than double the price compared to an Iron Girl energy bar? I don’t know that either. If anyone from Nutrilite or Amway, or an IBO, can help explain it, I’d love more information. What I do know is that it’s unlikely that many triathletes are going to be turned on to Nutrilite by this review. All the information they get is from the magazine, and then the Nutrilite Health and Amway websites. That tells them these products are expensive, and out of stock.

Is that what you want from being highlighted in a magazine?

UPDATE: Even worse, anyone checking out this product after September 2 (two days from now), will see another price – $22.65 for a box of 9, or $2.52/bar. So a potential customer checking out the product is going to get yet another “sticker shock”. Unless there’s something incredibly special about this product – and if there is, both IBOs and customers need to be educated about it, the only way I can see this being successfully marketed to customers is by IBOs putting big discounts on the suggested retail price. Even at base IBO price the bars are still significantly more expensive than the competitors. At least though they’d be marketable. Is Amway US slipping back to the old habit of targeting product pricing at IBOs instead of customers?

Amway UK Price Comparisons

I gave Amway Scandinavia a bit of a slam the other day for some of their partner store pricing and it provoked some interesting comments. What seems clear is some markets seem to do a good job of setting up good deals for ABOs, others are not so good at it. I’m curious as to how these deals are setup and who is consulted. My feeling is if it’s not obviously a good deal when a new ABO or prospect looks at it, then the deal shouldn’t be done at all. It matters – I’m sure I’m not alone amongst ABOs in having had prospects return waving printouts of supposed “price comparisons” done by anti-Amway zealots and claiming the whole thing was a rip-off. I’m fundamentally lazy – why make Amway harder than it has to be?

So, in the interests of making it easier, and a more positive note for Amway Europe, here’s a price comparison I did recently (2009-08-20) of a range of Amway products in the UK. I did the comparison after a critic I was engaged in debate with claimed that with outlets like Tesco and ADSA –

“(the price of) Amway products (in the UK) are so out of kilter as to be ludicrous.”

I had no idea if he was right or wrong, so I thought I’d go and look. Here is what I found, and my response …. Continue reading Amway UK Price Comparisons

Amway Scandinavia – Scandalous! What are they thinking?

One of the things Amway is often criticised for is “overpriced products”. Often the criticism is unfounded or unfair (see my earlier post Anatomy of Deceit – an Amway Critic’s price comparisons), but one common thread is that when people criticise Amway’s prices they more often than not don’t mention Amway products, but rather 3rd party products available through Amway. Usually though, when you actually go and compare the same or similar quality of product elsewhere, Amway is price competitive. Still, this isn’t always obvious. Who knew there were so many different types of toilet paper? How many people actually care? Continue reading Amway Scandinavia – Scandalous! What are they thinking?

Anatomy of Deceit – an Amway Critic’s price comparisons

I was having a discussion about Amway products and to my surprise the other party cited “JoeCool’s website” as evidence that Amway’s products were overpriced and not competitive – in other words, a scam. JoeCool is of course a well known anti-Amway zealot. So I thought I’d have a look at JoeCool’s price comparisons, and he was his usual dishonest self. This is JoeCool’s comparisons Continue reading Anatomy of Deceit – an Amway Critic’s price comparisons