Scrum.org provides high-quality level professional training. Professional Scrum Trainers are top-notch Scrum professionals delivering excellent training and training materials.
But quality comes at a price. Then again, Prices are relative: The price I pay for a loaf of bread in Amsterdam is not the same as the price I pay in Abidjan in Africa. As you know, there is a difference in purchasing power across the world. This difference creates inequality for people to educate and develop themselves. Richer people have an advantage over poorer people in acquiring knowledge.
This is an ever-existing problem I cannot solve globally, but I can make a small difference with the pricing of my training. I can compensate for the difference in purchasing power by lowering training registration prices for less fortunate countries. I provide physical scrum.org training in Ukraine for about half the regular western European price.
Covid extended the training domain to online, giving the whole world easy access to the same high-quality training events. Suddenly operating in a truly global market, I noticed that people choose training events within or close to their time zones. That makes sense: it is not convenient to join a class at three in the morning for most of us. Knowing this, I scheduled online PSM-1 training for a high price in GMT+1 (Western Europe) and for a lower price in EET (eastern Europe). To my surprise, this resulted in people from richer European countries registering for my eastern European offerings (at lower prices). :-(
The situation was not as bad as it seemed. An explanatory email or phone call with the future training candidates solved the issue. I needed to explain better what the idea is behind the difference in prices. I learned some of them selected purely on training dates in reasonable time zones and did not even consider the price because their companies pay for it anyway.
I fine-tuned my pricing strategy and came up with the following:
- Everybody should have equal opportunity for getting educated, therefore prices for training should be relative to PPI (purchasing power index).
- I will take these principles into account when setting a price for my training unless there is a law that prohibits this. (In Europe there is a law roughly stating that price differentiation on the country of origin is prohibited in the EU.)
- The country of origin of the entity paying for the training is leading. An entity is a person or a company. Example: If the entity resides in Ukraine, they pay a low price (PPI in UA is 31). If an entity resides in the Netherlands, they pay a high price (PPI in NL is 90). For companies, the PPI is derived from the country their HQ located. A person working for Exxon in Abidjan, Africa pays high prices.
- Attendees with a PPI lower than 42 pay a low price. Why 42? It’s my arbitrary choice looking at the list of PPI per country, combined with what I know from these countries.
If you have ideas for improving my Fair pricing strategy, please let me know.
If you want to sign up for one of my affordable upcoming training events, go here.