Price the Tier — Re-architect Brücke Mobility's Pricing After the Fairness Backlash

A four-round, advanced pricing and revenue-management simulation set inside Brücke Mobility GmbH, a Düsseldorf mobility-subscription company with 640,000 subscribers, €312M revenue and a 34% blended contribution margin earned from a single flat €42/month plan.

A leaked 'personalised price' pilot (the same plan shown at €39 to one user and €51 to another, based on device and location) has triggered a viral fairness backlash (#BrückeAbzocke), a consumer-protection inquiry, a fairness score collapse from 72 to 49, and churn spiking to 19%.

The CFO holds a hard target: lift blended margin from 34% to 39% and revenue by ≥8% while restoring the fairness score above 65 — within a fenced, transparent tier structure, not personalised pricing.

Playing the Head of Pricing, you (1) read the four behavioural segments (Students/Occasional, Daily Commuters, Multimodal Power Users, Families) and diagnose which segment the flat €42 plan under-prices, anchoring tiers on value rather than device data; (2) design a good-better-best tier ladder, setting the entry and top prices and the price-gap discipline that stops high-value power users buying down; (3) build segmentation fences that are simultaneously leak-proof and perceived as fair — verified student status, commitment length and off-peak access, never device/location/browsing signals; and (4) defend fairness and launch — a transparent narrative that publicly retires personalised pricing, a grandfathering transition for loyal subscribers, and a fenced value response to the €35 national entrant rather than a margin-destroying price war.

The math rewards Winkelmann's consumer-perspective lens — capturing margin through self-selection and fair fences — and punishes the five classic errors: margin-only design that ignores fairness, data-based fences that repeat the scandal, tier gaps too small that trigger cannibalisation, a blanket price war against the entrant, and a silent or abrupt launch.

Final KPIs track Blended Margin %, Revenue Lift %, Fairness Score and Cannibalisation Risk against a fixed €2.4M launch budget.

An advanced simulation for participants used to working with the main frameworks and trade-offs of the subject, designed for executive education and experienced professionals.