This is the digital era, and it has been so for a while now. Our society is nowadays deeply rooted in digital technology, and it's logical to predict that this connection will only deepen with time and the price of goods and services shall be settled in… TOKENS.
Regarding pricing, as we know at this point that it’s advisable to distribute free apps in order to gain preference and win something later by selling improved or exclusive versions with incremental benefits marketed at incremental prices. So, the price of zero is for sure the best price competitively speaking, but even so it isn’t the only one. As Chris Anderson pointed out, entrepreneurs have to come up with products that people like and accept for free as well as other products that people want to acquire even if they have to pay for them (Anderson, 2009).
On the other hand, price wars in virtual markets take place much faster than in the physical world. In a decentralized business environment, the pricing mechanisms rely on blockchain technology (Chuen, 2017), which can support features that allow sophisticated pricing policies (Ali et al., 2017, p. 9). These prices are also not as limited thanks to the unparalleled divisibility of cryptocurrencies, which makes them a powerful tool for micropayments (Bitcoin is divisible into satoshis that correspond to the their hundredth millionth part…). So, the use of tokens as a means of payment can operationalize any price increase, which may be as small as the incremental benefits that justify it.
Cryptocurrencies also allow faster payment of premium features and even micropayments to purchase single features, since they "are better for microtransactions and micropayments with very fast resolution" (Antonopoulos, 2016, p. 135). Therefore, Blockchain will facilitate the adoption of an "as-you-go” service approach (e.g. Pay-as-you-go) and eventually people will start to prefer "using" instead of "owning". Services that let customers access goods, such as “couch-surfing” and “car-sharing”, are increasing relevance as an alternative to ownership. These access-based services also allow consumers to avoid the “burdens of ownership, i.e., risks and responsibilities that come with owning a good [...] a higher usage of an access-based service increases the likelihood that consumers subsequently reduce ownership." (Schaefers, 2016, p. 569)
I firmly believe in the network effect that tokens embedded in a product or service can create (a kind of "network ownership" syndrome). This dynamic is much more interesting in terms of marketing because the value of a user's ownership stake should not be neglected (eg. Steemit) and need not be forcibly chosen between owning 100% of a product or service (eg. Private home or private car) or 0% (eg. Rental home or Uber ride). After all, thanks to blockchain, it is now possible to “mind the gap” by choosing any value in this range, a value that can not only quantify property over something (securities) but also its functionality (utility tokens).
Prices will become adjusted to the precise desires of individuals and, consequently, to the interests of communities simultaneously assuring sustainability. This is the future we are now creating when using blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
Ali, M. R. Nelson, J. & Freedman, M. (2017). Blockstack: A Decentralized Internet. Retrieved from https://blockstack.org/whitepaper.pdf
Anderson, Chris. (2009). “Free: the future of a radical price”. New York: Hyperion;
Antonopoulos, Andreas. (2016). The Internet of Money. Merkle Bloom LLC
Chuen, K., & David, L. E. E. (2017). Fintech Tsunami: Blockchain as the Driver of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Schaefers, T., Lawson, S. J., & Kukar-Kinney, M. (2016). How the burdens of ownership promote consumer usage of access-based services. Marketing Letters, 27(3), 569-577.