25 Experiments, 30,000 Consumers: Cutting Quality Feels Worse to Clients Than Raising Your Price

Your costs went up this year. Desk fees, MLS dues, your CRM, the photographer. You've got three choices. Eat it. Raise your fee. Or quietly give clients less for the same money.

Most agents pick door number three and never say it out loud. One open house instead of two. Phone photos instead of a pro. The weekly seller update turns into a monthly one.

Here's what the research says about that move.

Ioannis Evangelidis, a marketing professor at ESADE Business School in Barcelona, laid out the findings in Harvard Business Review in September. Across 25 experiments involving more than 30,000 consumers, people judged quality reductions as less fair than price increases or smaller package sizes. And once they discovered the change, they were less willing to keep buying.

There's a name for it: skimpflation. The experiments were about consumer products, not commissions. But the logic carries over. A quality cut changes the experience a customer came to expect from a brand they trusted. In your business, the experience is the product.

Think about who refers you. It's the seller who got the Tuesday call every single week. Cut that call to save an hour and you didn't save anything. You spent your next referral.

The article's advice when a tradeoff can't be avoided: say so clearly and give the customer a choice. That lowers the sense of being deceived.

So do this before Friday. Write down the three things your best past clients mention when they refer you. Those are off limits. Protect them. If the math still doesn't work, change your fee or build service tiers. Do it out loud, in writing, and let the client pick.

Quiet cuts get discovered. Price changes get discussed.

Originally published by Ioannis Evangelidis at Harvard Business Review. Read the full piece here: https://hbr.org/2026/09/when-raising-prices-is-better-than-cutting-quality