Question 1: Examples

Along with the all you can eat buffets, many other bars in Taiwan and
in the US offer all the free snacks you want and you can make
'donations'. Of course the snacks only enhance your need to drink more
alcohol....so is this a PWYW strategy that guarantees high returns as
the customer consumers more alcohol? And of course is the similar sales
techniques for color printers...the printer is given away for nearly
free, but you have to keep buying the expensive ink. So, do these 2
examples rival the PWYW theory, or are they an extension of this idea?

I think this example will sound a little crazy to many people, but actually it's an application of PWYW.

In some developing countries, who have visited some of them (I used to live in one), you can find some poor guys on the street offering their services for cleaning your car's windshield and mirrors while you wait for the changing of the traffic light, sometimes they do it even without your autorization and tell you directly: "you can PAY WHAT YOU WANT and if you don't want DON'T PAY NOTHING", even you have the option of not paying nothing, actually you finally pay something because of a fairness feeling.

They don't need to invest too much, they just need some water with a little of soap and a cloth, with those things they can clean many car's windshields for some hours. They just invest maybe US 1, but actually they can get more than 10 times that invesment, because the drivers value more the service and because there is a fairness feeling behind.

Luis

Besides music & software downloading, online libraries, and so on... there is a very interesting example for those people who like to be healthy and practice sports, a company of yoga classes Vital Yoga located in USA, Colorado with different locations around the country that applies PWYW. Is very interesting how they attract their costumers by suggesting a drop-in donations of $15 dls. but gives emphasis that any person interested in attending can pay the amount they want.

Vital Yoga strategy is to attract a great amount of costumers to attend the classes and not letting a day pass without practicing yoga because of short funds. Also they promote special offers for cooking classes of raw food to become vegetarian, for this product they have set prices.

So this company provides a variety of services and applying PWYW for the yoga classes as a "hook" in order to attract more costumers. This allows the costumers to get to know the company, its services and as way to promote other products for them to buy them as well.

http://www.vitalyoga.org/index.php

I guess that all on-line auction sometimes work like that - you offer your price and you can get an item. Of course, as long as no one else does not pay more than you, so there is an extra rule

As I cannot think of any new examples of just PWYW products, I'll give one that gives the additional rule: as long as it is at least...

This year when staring to sell Championship Manager 2010, football manager simulation game, Eidos - the producer - offered special deal for Brits: they could get the game for 2,5 pounds OR MORE< if they wished to pay more. As it is a certain group of fans, I guess that most of them paid more. It was not offered outside UK, so I was not able to profit from that offer. But if I had the occasion... I would definitely do it:) and pay more than 2,5;)

Handmade products, where someone selling it rather than put strict price to each piece, count on buyer apprieciation of his work.

Any other company that sell published magazines relying on client community indentification with company(foundation). So payment for product is more like support, the more you pay the better you feel.

I think, many start ups can use this price method, for example i offer language courses and normally my students suggest a price to me after my first lesson, this price is normally higher than what i would set myself so i tend to agree with it

There's one example just across from our campus! There's a vegetarian restaurant in the alley that "occationally" let customers PWYW. They've been in the business for almost 30 years now, and the main reason why they've choice this pricing method is to "give back to the society."