VALUE-BASED Strategic Pricing Best Practice for Veterinary Practices
How to Use Loss Leader Pricing Effectively

To operate sustainably, every veterinary practice must balance two essential business objectives. First and foremost, your practice must satisfy its clients by treating pet ailments effectively and providing friendly and competent service to pet owners. Second, your practice must earn a healthy profit at the end of the year to be able to pay its employees fairly, maintain the quality of its facilities and operations, and continue to grow. An effective pricing strategy that is nuanced and customer focused is necessary to achieve these objectives.

A core principle of nuanced, customer-focused pricing strategy is that prices of veterinary services and products should be set to achieve specific goals beyond just covering the costs of providing them to clients. Not every transaction has to earn a profit or even cover costs. The veterinary practice may willingly take a loss on selling a service or product in a transaction if it generates other significant positive outcomes for the business. Such positive outcomes include attracting new clients who have never been to your practice before, encouraging clients who haven’t returned in a while to come back with their pets, and introducing your practice’s current satisfied clients to new products (e.g., medication for a chronic condition or food) and services (e.g., boarding) that they have not purchased at your practice before.

In this best practice tool, we will consider this pricing method in greater detail by describing the concept of loss leader pricing and how to implement it in a veterinary practice. We will discuss precisely what loss leader pricing is, and how it can financially benefit your veterinary practice and provide value to the pets and pet owners you serve. We will also examine the decisions you will have to make to implement loss leader pricing effectively and give examples of loss leader pricing offers.

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