Price-Pack Architecture Planner
Design a price-pack lineup that grows revenue, not confusion.
What is the Price-Pack Architecture Planner?
The Price-Pack Architecture Planner is a free AI skill that designs a coherent price-pack lineup for a food or beverage brand across sizes, tiers, and channels. You give it the product, your current packs and prices, the channels you sell in, and your margins; it returns a structured architecture — the role each pack plays (entry, core, value, premium, trial), the price and size ladder, how packs map to channels and occasions, the trade-up paths between them, and the cannibalization and margin risks to watch. It is built for category, brand, and revenue-management teams who need a lineup that grows revenue and guides shoppers up, rather than a confusing pile of SKUs that compete with each other. Rather than pricing one SKU in isolation, it thinks in the whole portfolio and the gaps between price points. It uses only the numbers you provide and flags where you need data. Pair it with real demand and willingness-to-pay signals so the tiers and gaps reflect what shoppers will actually pay.
Who it's for
- Category and revenue-management teams setting price architecture
- Brand teams planning a pack and pricing lineup
- Shopper teams aligning packs to channels and occasions
- Founders structuring their first pack ladder
What you get
- A role for each pack (entry, core, value, premium, trial)
- A price and size ladder across the range
- Pack-to-channel and pack-to-occasion mapping
- Trade-up paths that grow basket and margin
- Cannibalization and price-gap risk flags
- A flag on where you need willingness-to-pay data
How to use it
- 1Paste the prompt into your AI model.
- 2Provide your current packs, prices, channels and margins.
- 3Answer its clarifying questions to focus the architecture.
- 4Ask it to model a new pack or a price change's knock-on effects.
See it in action
Example input
Brand: fictional 'Pep' energy drink. Current: single 250ml can $2.49 (convenience), 4-pack $8.99 (grocery). Channels: convenience, grocery, club. Margin healthy on singles, thinner on multipacks. Problem: no entry price for trial and nothing for club; shoppers jump straight to the 4-pack or not at all.
Example output
Price-pack architecture — Pep energy drink Current gaps: - No low-risk trial price below the 4-pack. - Nothing for club (bulk value). - A big jump from one $2.49 can to an $8.99 4-pack — no bridge. Proposed pack ladder & roles: - Single 250ml — $2.49 (convenience): TRIAL / impulse. Recruit new drinkers. - 2-pack — [insert price]: BRIDGE between trial and stock-up. - 4-pack — $8.99 (grocery): CORE household pack. - 8-pack — [insert price] (club): VALUE / stock-up; protects loyal-buyer volume. - Premium variant single — [insert price]: TRADE-UP (new functional/flavor tier). Channel mapping: - Convenience: singles (impulse, highest margin). - Grocery: 4-pack core + premium single trade-up. - Club: 8-pack value only (don't put club value pricing where grocery shoppers see it). Trade-up paths: Trial single → 4-pack (household) → premium single (higher margin). The bridge 2-pack reduces the leap that currently loses triers. Risks to watch: - Cannibalization: an 8-pack priced too low pulls 4-pack buyers down — keep a clear per-unit gap. - Channel leakage: club value undercutting grocery erodes the core. Separate the channels. - Margin: multipacks are already thinner; model the mix shift before launching the 8-pack. Data to confirm: - [Insert per-unit price elasticity / willingness-to-pay by channel.] Want me to model the 8-pack's likely impact on 4-pack volume and total margin?
The prompt
Here's the start of the prompt. Download the free bundle for the full, ready-to-paste version — plus the installable Claude Skill and Custom-GPT instructions.
# Role You are a CPG revenue-management and category strategist who designs price-pack architecture across a portfolio. You think in pack roles, price ladders, and the gaps between price points — never a single SKU in isolation. # Context I'll provide - Brand / product: [PRODUCT] - Current packs & prices: [PACKS / PRICES] - Channels: [CHANNELS] - Margins (by pack if known): [MARGINS] - The problem or goal (optional): [GOAL e.g. trial, trade-up, club entry] # Your task 1. If product, current packs/prices, or channels are missing, ask up to 3 clarifying questions first.
Frequently asked questions
- What is price-pack architecture?
- Price-pack architecture (PPA) is the deliberate design of a brand's pack sizes and price points across channels so each pack plays a distinct role — trial, core, value, premium — and guides shoppers up a ladder. Done well it grows revenue and margin; done badly it's a confusing set of SKUs that cannibalize each other. This skill designs that ladder.
- How does it prevent packs from cannibalizing each other?
- It gives every pack a single clear role and insists on meaningful per-unit price gaps between tiers, so a value multipack doesn't simply pull buyers down from your core pack. It also separates channels — keeping club or value pricing away from where your core grocery shopper would see it — and flags cannibalization risk explicitly.
- Will it invent price elasticity numbers?
- No. The prompt tells the model to use only the prices and margins you provide, to speak directionally about elasticity rather than fabricating figures, and to flag exactly where you'd need real willingness-to-pay data before committing. That keeps the architecture defensible rather than a guess dressed up as math.
- Can it help me decide whether to add a new pack?
- Yes. Describe the new pack you're considering and ask it to model the knock-on effects — how it might pull volume from existing packs and shift your total margin mix — so you can see whether it's genuinely incremental or just reshuffling. Real demand data makes that read far more reliable.
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