value

A recent book, The Three Rules (link to PDF), written by Michael Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed confirms that competing on price is not a successful business strategy.

The two business authors spent five years studying more than 25,000 companies, in hundreds of industries, covering a 45-year span. They narrowed down the list of companies to 344. These were companies whose long-term success was not due to luck but rather to specific business decisions.

They found that these companies did three things in common from which the authors formulated their three rules for how successful companies think:
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Architectural photographer Brad Feinknopf explains why photographers should not lower their prices in a slow economy:

Please, do not let a poor economy bring the industry of photography to its knees by merely bending to market pressure. (…) We, as architectural photographers, bring great value and please do recognize that! (…) we are assisting our clients to sell their wares, to generate new business, to help them win awards and sometimes, even get them published. Without architectural photography, the publications would merely be words, as would be the websites. They do need us and, believe it or not, most value what we do. We need to value it, too. Do not forget the value you bring and demand adequate compensation for that value.

– Brad Feinknopf

It’s worth reading his entire blog post to understand the clothing store analogy that he uses. Although he refers to architectural photographers, the analogy Feinknopf uses also applies to other professional photographers.