Pricing strategy and the position of Venus in business charts

In traditional astrology, Venus is associated with material goods and resources. These resources provide (economic) value to their respective owners. The value of a resource or product, as perceived by the market, will usually be reflected in its pricing. This is because a product can never be sold for a price that exceeds what customers are willing to pay.

With this in mind, we might posit that the position of Venus in a brand’s astrologicy chart will provide clues about the pricing strategy employed for its products. More precisely, the zodiac sign housing Venus might show us what pricing strategy works well for (and will therefore be adopted) to promote that product.

How pricing strategy relates to Venus’ placements

Based on the current literature and understanding of astrology, I have come up with different pricing strategies for a Venus position in each of the 12 signs of the zodiac:

However, testing all these pricing strategies against the Venus placement would require a large pool of data, as each combination of sign and pricing strategy would have to be independently verified with a minimum of 30 data points to produce accurate statistical results.

For the sake of simplicity, I have therefore come up with two different hypotheses that will be tested in this article:

Hypothesis 1:

Brands using a budget pricing strategy tend to have Venus in Taurus placements.

Hypothesis 2:

Brands using a premium pricing strategy tend to have Venus in Leo placements.

The assumption behind these hypotheses’ is that brands with Venus in Taurus placements will sit on the lower end of the pricing range in their respective product categories, while brands with Venus in Leo placements will lean towards high-ticket pricing.

Pricing strategies and Venus placements of specific brands

To test the two hypotheses, we need a list of companies that use budget and/or high-end pricing strategies. In this list, I have included brands from six different industries: hotels, mobile phones, airlines, grocery stores, fashion brands and car models.

These six industries lend themselves well to the analysis because:

• Product prices are clearly displayed and (relatively) easy to find – so brands can be categorised as employing budget, premium or other pricing strategies
• The release dates (or founding dates) were available – so the position of Venus in the astrological chart can be determined
• The global market for each industry is large enough that we can expect to find multiple brands with budget and premium pricing strategies.

The exact data points for the analysis are given below:

Industry 1: Hotels

Industry 2: Mobile phones

Industry 3: Airlines

Industry 4: Grocery brands

Industry 5: Fashion

Industry 6: Cars

Statistical analysis of the hypotheses

Based on the data presented above, we can attempt to validate the initial hypothesis that pricing strategy will vary with the Venus placement in a brand’s astrological chart.

Distribution of Venus placements for budget vs. high-end brands

We can compare the distribution of Venus placements for the 63 brands in the analysis, depending on whether they employ budget or high-end pricing. As shown in the chart below, Venus was most frequently placed in Leo across all data points in the sample, with this occurring for 13 / 63 ≈ 20% of brands.

We also see that Venus was found in Taurus for 5 brands in the sample, all of which used a budget pricing strategy. This seems to corroborate the first hypothesis that there may be a relationship between low-end pricing and Venus in Taurus placements. However, the statistical significance of this observation has yet to be considered.

Similarly, we see find an over-representation of Venus in Aquarius placements for brands that use a high-end pricing strategy (6 compared to 1 brand with a budget pricing strategy).  

But are the results statistically significant?

Statistical significance when comparing pricing strategy and Venus in business charts

To evaluate the statistical significance of the results, we can use a chi-squared test. A chi-squared test can help us compare the difference between expected and observed data.

Expected data

To simplify the analysis, we will assume that Venus spends an equal amount of time in each sign of the zodiac, and as such Venus placements in zodiac signs should follow a discrete uniform distribution. This just means that, across a large enough sample, Venus has a 1/12 probability of appearing in each zodiac sign.

Observed data

Looking at the data that we gathered, we do however find that Venus placements are not uniformly distributed. The table below shows a skewed distribution in the budget category, with Taurus, Gemini and Leo being overrepresented in the sample.

Chi-squared test for uniform distribution across the entire sample

A chi-squared test of the combined data across budget and high-end groups also suggests that the results are not uniformly distributed.

Using the chi-squared formula (χ² = Σ [(O – E)² / E]), we can determine the average difference between observed and expected results for each zodiac sign. For example, for Aries, this would be: (3 – 5.333)² / 5.333 = 1.0249.

Summing up the differences of all zodiac signs, we find that χ² = 20.7537.

As there are 12 categories, we will use 11 degrees of freedom, and a significance level of 5%, to determine the critical value. Using a right-tailed test, the critical value is approximately 19.675.

As this is lower than χ² = 20.7537, this means there is a statistically significant difference between the observed and expected frequencies at the 0.05 significance level. The sample size is also just about adequate for a chi-squared test, as we had an expected frequency per cell of 5.333.

Chi-squared test for uniform distribution across the budget sample

Looking into the budget brands as an individual group, we also find that the data is not uniformly distributed.

In fact, the chi-squared test produces a value of χ² = 24.3605, which exceeds the critical value of 19.675, and shows that there is significant deviation from the expected values. Specifically, Leo, Taurus and Gemini are overrepresented in the low-budget group, while Libra and Capricorn are not even observed.

This means we can probably accept the hypothesis that: Brands using a budget pricing strategy tend to have Venus in Taurus placements.

However, it is worth noting that there were only 31 data points in this group, distributed across 12 zodiac signs. This means that the expected value was very small (at 2.58) and the data may be more vulnerable to errors. Therefore, to provide accurate results, the hypothesis should be verified against a larger data set.

Chi-squared test for uniform distribution across the high-end sample

As with the budget brands, the data in the high-end group is not uniformly distributed. However, a chi-squared test produces a value of χ² (13.9588), which is smaller than the critical value of 19.675.

So, based on this sample, we should accept the null hypothesis at the 0.05 significance level. In other words, the data suggests that Brands using a premium pricing strategy do not have any particular Venus placements.

However, it is worth noting that there were only 33 data points, distributed across 12 categories. This means that the expected value was very small (2.75) and there is a high risk of a Type II. In fact, the probability that we falsely conclude there is a uniform distribution of Venus placements among companies with premium pricing is around 30%.