Friday, October 29, 2010

Great Kids Village, A Pricing Question

Sylvia (my 11 month old daughter) and I just got back from Great Kids Village in Silver Spring. The place is a store sized indoor play area for young kids (I'd say ages crawling to age 6 or so) with lots of toys and things to climb and explore. Sylvia had a great time.

Looking at their prices I was a little surprised by the pricing for memberships. If you buy a family membership the price is the same if you have one kid or are an Octomom (she did move to Rockville I think, so it's not out of the question).

Now I have seen things in the past where the second kid costs less than the first, but I wonder why they don't charge different prices depending on the number of kids?

Some possibilities.

1. It might not matter much in a place like Silver Spring with a lot of single child families.

2. They plan to open a cafe soon, so families with more kids would bring in profits in other ways.

3. The pricing is a result of what economists call price discrimination. Usually discrimination is a bad word I don't want you to think that it is on economics, but other examples of price discrimination include senior and student discounts. In some sense they are charging the same price to both families with one kid or more than one kid. In another they are charging different prices per kid to these two groups. Usually price discrimination happens when two groups are different (like students or senior have less money than the average person). So perhaps families with more than 1 kid have less disposal income.

Either way Sylvia had a good time so that's all that matters!
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