Chess.com Regional Pricing: A Case Study

Summary

What is Regional Pricing?It is the goal of every business to maximise profits. As a business, it is your responsibility to price your products in a way that will yield the most profit. Price your product too low and you risk missing out on a significant amount of profit. Price your product too high and it won't be affordable for many potential customers. To address this issue, businesses use profit maximization to settle on an optimal price, which is the point where profit is highest while balancing price and demand.Now, consider that many businesses have customers from all around the world. To maximise global profits, a business needs to adjust its prices in different regions based on each country’s purchasing power and other factors like taxes, shipping, and tariffs. This is critical because a price that is affordable in one country may be too expensive in another. Without adjusting for these differences, a business could either underprice or overprice in certain markets, reducing profits in both cases.Many popular online services use regional pricing such as Netflix, Spotify, HBO Max, Disney+, YouTube Premium, Steam and Epic Games Store. In this article, I analyse the regional pricing strategy used by the popular online chess platform, Chess.com.Chess.com Premium MembershipChess.com offers several premium membership plans. There are standard monthly plans (Gold, Platinum, and Diamond) as well as cost-effective yearly plans (Gold, Platinum, Diamond, and Family). These plans give your account access to several premium-only features such as unlimited Puzzles, Game Reviews, and Insights.There are 7 total SKUs (distinct product plans) that Chess.com is currently selling:gold_monthly_032022platinum_monthly_032022diamond_monthly_032022gold_yearly_032022platinum_yearly_032022diamond_yearly_032022fnf6_diamond_yearly_022025The fnf6_diamond_yearly_022025 SKU is particularly interesting. It belongs to the Family & Friends plan which Chess.com released in May 2025. This plan ...