wonky pricing
Wonky pricing is when a business sets prices by mood, guesswork, or copying a rival, instead of by working out actual cost and profit.
In plain English
You have seen it before without giving it a name. Two shops on the same street sell the same bag of rice, one for ₦52,000 and the other for ₦61,000, and when you ask why, nobody can give you a straight answer. That gap is not strategy. That is wonky pricing, the calm habit of pricing things by feeling rather than by working the numbers.
Wonky pricing happens when a business owner sets a price because it sounds right, because a competitor charges that much, or because the customer in front of them looks like they can afford it. There is no cost breakdown behind it. No account for time spent, transport, spoilage, or the cost of money tied up in stock. The price is a guess wearing a suit.
Take a Lagos woman selling puff puff from a small stand near a bus stop. She charges ₦100 per piece because that is what everyone around her charges, without working out that her oil, flour, and gas now cost more than they did six months ago. She is busy every day and still somehow broke every month, and the reason is sitting calmly in her pricing, not in her hustle.
In the United Kingdom, a Nigerian owned hair braiding salon in Peckham might charge £80 for a style because that is the going rate on the street, without factoring in the extra hour it takes them personally, or the cost of the premium hair they insist on using. Meanwhile someone sending money home to support that same salon owner's family in Enugu has no idea that the business bringing in the pounds is bleeding calmly from underneath.
The fix is not complicated, just unfashionable. It means sitting down with your actual costs, adding your time honestly, adding a real margin, and letting that number lead, even if it feels stiff compared to guessing. Wonky pricing survives because doing the sum feels like extra work, until the day the business folds and you realise the sum was the whole business.
A tailor in Aba charges ₦8,000 for a native shirt because that is what the tailor two shops down charges. When she finally adds up fabric, thread, electricity, and her own labour, the real cost comes to ₦9,500. She has been paying customers ₦1,500 each to dress them.
Questions people ask
How do I know if my pricing is wonky?
Ask yourself why your price is what it is. If the honest answer is 'because that is what others charge' or 'because it felt right', and not a sum of your actual costs plus a margin, your pricing is wonky. The test is whether you can defend the number with figures, not feelings.
Does wonky pricing only affect small businesses?
No, it shows up in bigger businesses too, especially ones that grew fast and never went back to check their sums. A company can have impressive sales and still be losing money on every unit sold, simply because nobody revisited the pricing after costs calmly rose.
Is it wrong to price based on what competitors charge?
It is not wrong to look at the market, but it becomes wonky when that is the only input. Use competitor prices as one piece of information, then check it against your own costs and the value you actually offer, so the final price is a decision, not a copy paste.
Last reviewed