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Jeremy Peterson avatar image
Jeremy Peterson asked

Catalog setup for A/B testing IAP on mobile

What is the recommended way to setup the Catalog items, stores and store items to facilitate A/B testing of real money pack prices on iOS and Android?

Unfortunately, in our game, we sell multiple packs of things in addition to just premium currency denominations. We want to be able to A/B test different prices for these packs for different segments of users.

I understand that creating a catalog item with the same ItemId as the IAP sku/productId ensures that the user receives the corresponding item automatically when using the ValidateiOSReceipt or ValidateAndroidReceipt methods.

I see two approaches here.

1. Create an App Store productId for every combination of pack and price point we wish to try. This requires a lot of work setting up all these combinations, but it is a relatively straight forward approach, and will show the correct IAP info on the platform-level purchase confirmation popup.

2. Create a single set of generic productIds (one per price point) that are shared by all packs. This requires minimal App Store setup and lets us easily add new packs without having to generate more productIds. However I'm not sure how to make this work with the way PlayFab is setup.

My current approach, which I haven't tested, is to create a catalog item for each pack price point. ie.:
iap_sku_pack_tier1, iap_sku_pack_tier2, ..., iap_sku_pack_tier20.
Then, create a catalog item for the actual pack content that the user should receive. ie.:
iap_item_pack_A, iap_item_pack_B, etc.

My plan was to then create a Store for each pack, generally, with a single item in it: the "sku item". This sku item would include the ItemId of the content item (eg. "{ itemId: iap_item_pack_A }") in its CustomData.

I was then hoping to grant the user the item referenced in the CustomData when they purchase the "sku item".

Is this a lost cause? Is there another approach?

Thanks!

In-Game EconomyandroidPlayer Inventory
3 comments
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Sarah Zhang avatar image Sarah Zhang commented ·

We are working on it.

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Jeremy Peterson avatar image Jeremy Peterson Sarah Zhang commented ·

Thank you for your quick reply Sarah. Are you able to share more details on what that means? Is there a timeline anywhere? Details on your implementation?

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Sarah Zhang avatar image Sarah Zhang Jeremy Peterson commented ·

We discussed about this question, and you can see the answer below.

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1 Answer

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Sarah Zhang avatar image
Sarah Zhang answered

Do you mean you want to provide the same items to different players with the different IAP prices? If so, we suggest you use the first approach. The second approach is more suitable for the scenario that providing the different items with the same price.

In the second approach, we guess you want to use the Segment overrides to set the different price for different segments. For example, Segment A can see the “sku item” whose RM price is 10$, and the Segment B can see the “sku item” whose RM price is 9.9$. Then you can find out the more attractive price. But as you said, the Catalog Item’s itemId should correspond to productId one-to-one. In this situation, the “sku item” would correspond to one product. And you can’t set multiple prices for one product in the same region’s app store. So, if using this approach, it would be difficult to implement the A/B test targeted for prices.

Besides, we don’t suggest you grant items to players through reading the Custom Data of another item. Custom Data is not designed for such usage. If you want to pack the different items in one item, you can consider using Bundles or Containers.

We would suggest you create the separate items for Segment A and Segment B, then create the corresponding stores for them. For example, you can put the item group A in the default store, and put the item group B in the Store B. Then you can use the Segment overrides to provide the Store B to the Segment B.

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