A launch price isn't just a number — it becomes the reference point every later price is judged against, regardless of what the product actually costs to deliver. Set that number low enough to win a land grab, and you've also set the ceiling customers believe is “fair,” no matter how the underlying economics change. Raising the price later isn't read as a normal business adjustment; it's read as a broken promise, and broken promises trigger cancellations far out of proportion to the dollar amount involved.

MoviePass supplied the clearest recent example. In 2017 it repriced its subscription to $9.95 a month for one movie a day in theaters — less than the cost of a single ticket in most U.S. markets — and subscriber counts rocketed past a million, then past three million within about a year. The company was paying theaters close to full price for every ticket its heavy users redeemed, so the $9.95 anchor was underwater from day one. When MoviePass tried to fix its economics — blacking out popular showtimes, capping selections, and eventually raising prices — the subscribers it had trained on $9.95 didn't see a correction; they saw a bait-and-switch, and canceled in large numbers. The service shut down in 2019, and its parent company filed for bankruptcy months later.

The lesson isn't limited to loss-leading pricing stunts. Any price you launch at — a discount, an introductory tier, a limited-time offer — becomes the number your market measures fairness against, and moving away from it costs far more goodwill than the initial discount ever earned in growth. Treat your launch price as the price you intend to defend, not a number you plan to walk back once you have traction.