So recently Wendy's has announced that they intend to introduce new Surge Pricing to their locations which will see prices increase and decrease depending on the time of day customers go to their restaurants. If there's more demand, consumers will be paying more. This has been met with a ton of attention and backlash from people because the idea is absurd for a Fast Food place. Part of the value proposition for fast food is that it is cheaper than a normal restaurant. I understand these companies need to be pushing record profits each year and failing to grow profits is considered a failure to shareholders but comparatively cheaper prices are a part of fast foods value proposition. You can't get around that. Additionally, did no one at Wendy's even think about what this means in practice? Higher demand means that the Wendy's location is getting more orders which means more customers. So consumers are going to have to pay more to wait longer for fast food? That's what this will look like in practice. This is the exact kinda thing that only out of touch executives think is a good idea. They think it's revolutionary. As marketers, the most important thing we can do is understand the consumers we are targeting. Moves like this are just incredibly out of touch and we keep seeing these things happening. It's as if these high level executives view themselves as being "at war" with the consumer rather than serving them and building a long lasting mutually beneficial relationship with the consumer. I understand price increases have to happen sometimes, but contrary to what these people seem to believe, there's actually ways you can go about it without showing your total lack of your respect for your consumers like Wendy's has here. I'm interested to hear everyone's thoughts on this and why it seems so many in marketing are completely out of touch with their consumers?