A bottle of water in the grocery store is $1.
At the gym, it’s $2.
At the airport it’s $4.
On an airplane it’s $7.
In all cases, it’s the same bottle of water. Its quality and essence are the same. The only difference is the context — the environment in which the bottle of water is found.
The same principle applies in real estate. If you took the same hypothetical home and planted it in different neighborhoods, it would be worth different amounts in each.
What makes the value different in each case?
The most obvious answer is location. The context or environment impacts our perception of what something is worth.
The water bottle metaphor is often used to illustrate the lesson that your intrinsic value is unchanging. So if your worth isn’t being recognized, then it might be time for you to change your environment.
But it’s not just the environment that influences the price of water.
Beyond Location: Other Influences on Worth
In the bigger picture, water from your tap is free. In many places, that water is just as good quality as some bottled water.
Why pay for bottled water at all? Or why can some brands charge more than others?
The fact that you pay for water at all is not only a factor of location; it’s also influenced by factors like packaging and promotion — the story we are told about the thing.
If package the same water in identical bottles with two different labels, the story you tell about the packaging will influence what people are willing to pay for each bottle — even if you keep them both in the same context.
The Power of Story
Story is what convinces us to pay for something we can get for free.
The same thing applies to whatever you’re selling.
If your offering isn’t getting traction in the marketplace, you can try to bring it to a place where it’s in more limited supply, and use market factors to drive up the price.
But that’s not possible when you’re talking about intangible products like services and information where the internet is your marketplace.
If you can’t increase the perceived value of what you’re selling by changing the environment, then you have two other options: take what you offer and package it differently, and then tell a different story about it.
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