The pricing of the Segway as an intrinsic component of the marketing strategy for the product is related to the context of the product in the market. When Segway first came out, its pricing was estimated to be in the $3,000 range, which(while high for a scooter(was far less than an automobile. With gas prices rising and concerns about global warming escalating, an option somewhere between walking and driving was just what many people were looking for. Although $3,000 sounds like a lot of money(and in fact one reviewer, Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, California, stated it was "about $2,000 too expensive and 40 pounds too heavy" (Harmon, 2001, p. 2)(it was actually "penetration pricing" designed to be "set artificially low in order to gain market share. Once this is achieved, the price is increased" ("Pricing Strategies," n.d.). People for whom the Segway is the ideal compromise for solving the gas price crisis jumped on board and bought the Segway, and there was interest from big customers such as the U.S. Postal Service, which bought 40 Segways to test whether it wanted to use them on a larger scale ("Postal Service Testing," 2002).
Although many people thought the $3,000 price tag was too high, and the Segway did not sell in huge numbers as its inventors expected, by 2008, the price was nearly $5,000. In February 2008, Target bought "a fleet" of Segways for use in 150 of its stores, to be used for security patrols ("Target Purchases a Fleet," 2008). The rise in price reflected a different pricing strategy(premium pricing ("Pricing Strategies," n.d.). This is a strategy predicated on a product's "uniqueness" in the market, used where "a substantial competitive advantage exists" ("Pricing Strategies," n.d.). In Segway's case, since there is nothing else really like it on the market, premium pricing is an appropriate pricing strategy.
Had I been marketing the Segway, I would...