Concepts
Strategies
The three strategy presets, the exact intensities and bounds behind each, and how to choose between them.
A strategy is how far you are willing to follow purchasing-power data. It sets the dampening intensity for each economic input and the bounds the combined factor is clamped to.
Changing the strategy recalculates every market immediately. Nothing is written; the matrix simply shows a different set of targets.
The presets
| Conservative | Balanced | Growth | |
|---|---|---|---|
| PPP intensity | 0.35 | 0.65 | 0.90 |
| Income intensity | 0.10 | 0.20 | 0.30 |
| Price-level intensity | 0.10 | 0.15 | 0.20 |
| Minimum price ratio | 0.70 | 0.45 | 0.25 |
| Maximum price ratio | 1.20 | 1.20 | 1.10 |
Intensity is the weight given to a factor: 0 ignores it, 1 applies it in full. See Parity targets for the dampening arithmetic.
What each one means in practice
Conservative floors prices at 70% of the converted base. It follows PPP only slightly, so targets stay close to a straight currency conversion. Choose it when your product has strong brand pricing, when you are nervous about existing subscribers, or as a first move before you have any outcome evidence.
Balanced is the default. It follows PPP substantially while leaving a floor at 45%, which keeps the poorest markets from collapsing to a price that cannot sustain support costs. For most catalogues this is the one to reason from.
Growth follows PPP nearly in full and allows prices down to 25% of the converted base. It maximizes addressable audience in low-income markets and gives up the most revenue per payer. Its maximum ratio is lower than the others (1.10 rather than 1.20) — it is a strategy for expanding reach downward, not for charging more in rich markets.
Reading the maximum ratio
All three strategies cap at or below 1.20. Paywall Parity will not recommend charging more than 20% above your converted base price in any market, whatever the data says.
A market that pins to the ceiling is nearly always a data artifact rather than a genuine recommendation to charge more. See Protected markets.
Choosing
Compare the three across your actual catalogue rather than reasoning about them abstractly. Switch strategies in the matrix and watch which markets move.
If a market's target is roughly the same under all three, the recommendation is robust. If it swings hard, the economic inputs for that market are doing all the work and you should check its confidence score before acting on it.
Custom strategies
The configuration type allows a custom strategy with arbitrary intensities and bounds, but no interface exposes it yet. Today the three presets are the whole set.