Mucking Around with Hearing Aid Price, Again
by Holly Hosford-Dunn, PhD and Amyn Amlani,PhD The Pricing series revs up for a multi-year update today, just in time to get in on the PCAST and IOM action of recent days and await signs from the FDA. In 2013, the announced intent was to “dive down and muck around with Price to test…
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Hi/Lo Bets on Hearing Aid Margins
Are you willing to bet that many audiologists focus on selling as many high-cost premium hearing aids as possible in order to make a living? Ethics aside, it sounds logical that you’ll make more money if you sell more expensive stuff, whether it’s diamonds or hearing aids. Maybe so for top-quality gemstones, but don’t take…
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I’ll Take That Bet and Raise You
Our profession was treated last week to a timely and balanced discussion of unbundling by Robyn Cox PhD. She is one of audiology’s most reasoned thinkers, test creator extraordinaire, talented researcher, and a nice person to boot. Dr. Cox addressed concerns being raised in policy-making circles that traditional hearing aid dispensing models are pricing many…
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Markup Gets a Makeover: Hearing Aid Pricing Part 12
“We don’t treat the product as a commodity other than the fact that the acquisition cost of the product is a line item.” Catherine Palmer PhD Last week took issues with unmarked black boxes and the misuse of “markup” with reference to hearing aid sales. Today’s post continues the theme by introducing better boxes to…
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Raising the Curtain on Wholesale to Retail Hearing Aid Pricing, part 2
Last week’s post raised the curtain on average wholesale and retail hearing aid pricing with the data in Figure 1, but it did not address average retail price of premium instruments. That’s a crucial part of the Price puzzle because that’s where most of the wholesale increase is occurring. Two big questions were left unanswered:…
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