1) The MIT Sloan Asia Business Conference conducted a pricing survey to determine the optimal pricing strategy for students, graduates, professionals, and how willingness to pay is impacted by factors like exposure to Asia. 2) The survey of 272 responses tested willingness to pay for different attendee groups and found opportunities to increase prices for all segments. 3) Contrary to hypotheses, the survey found that MBAs were the most price sensitive overall, and that differences in Asia exposure did not significantly impact willingness to pay. The recommendations were to raise student prices to $50 and professional prices to $100 to double revenues.

1. MIT Sloan Asia Business Conference 15.818 Pricing Project Thomas Annicq Shih-Hung Chen Douglas Hwang LilianTse

2. 1st ever MIT Sloan Asia Business Conference Pricing Strategy 1.0: Pricing “from the gut” What do competing regional conferences charge? Pricing a little under that Capacity constraint hit quickly Opportunity missed

3. Pricing Survey Goals Is exposure to Asia related to willingness to pay? How can we maximize both undergrad and grad attendance? Do MBA’s have a different willingness to pay than grad students? What prices should we charge professionals?

4. 15.818 Approach Monadic Pricing Survey 272 Responses Testing various WTP for the 4 different constituents Back testing based on data from specific themed conferences: SAC, VCC, PES

5. Survey Participants Mean exposure level: 6.2 (out of 10) St. Dev: 2.1

6. Hypothesis Students are more price elastic than non-students (MBA less than non-MBAs) Past attendees are more price elastic than non-attendees Those exposed to Asia will be less price elastic than non-exposed

7. Total Interest, WTP

8. Asia Exposure, WTP

9. Asia Exposure, WTP

10. Attendance, MBA, WTP

11. Elasticity Opportunities to increase price in all segments, for interested parties Contrary to hypothesis, MBAs are the most price sensitive when considering everyone Differences in Asia exposure are minor

12. MBA Conferences Compared Data pulled from MIT Sloan Africa, Latin America, Asia, VC, PE, Sports and HBS Asia Conferences

13. Conclusions WTP does not change with expected exposure Previous attendance Industry conferences have lower elasticities than regional conferences MBA Conference Pricing is generally TOO low

14. Survey Artifacts Very MBA-centric survey participants Price anchoring “Gaming”

15. Recommendations Asian Business Conference Raise student prices to $50 Raise professional prices to $100 In effect double revenues Re-brand conference to a regional “industry” focus

16. Questions?