A Netflix Premium subscription costs €10.99 in Bulgaria. The identical subscription in Ireland, same catalogue and same currency, costs €23.99.
No exchange rate explains that gap entirely because there is no exchange rate involved. Netflix decided that Irish households can absorb a price Bulgarian households cannot. Across its wider footprint, the spread is starker still, and a study by Sharesub that sampled Netflix Premium prices across 40 countries in April 2026 found the price varying by a factor of ten depending on where you log in.
Most companies entering a new market do something far less considered. They take the domestic price, run it through a currency converter, and publish whatever number appears. It feels efficient, but it actually costs money in both directions. A price that ignores local earnings prices you out of the market, which means you’re sitting out a large sum of money.
The stakes at the checkout are well documented. Shopify reports that 92% of shoppers prefer to buy from sites that show prices in their local currency, and 33% will likely abandon a purchase when pricing appears only in US dollars. Currency is the easy part, though. Price localization is the work that follows it.
What Is Price Localization?
Price localization means setting your price for each market according to what that market can pay, expects to pay, and is already paying your competitors. Currency conversion is one input among several rather than the whole exercise.
The entry requirement is local currency and price formatting. Shoppers want their own currency, formatted the way they read numbers, with decimal and thousand separators sitting where they expect to find them.
Purchasing power and affordability determine whether your prices are presumed reasonable or outright ridiculous. The Netflix research illustrates this really well. It shows that adjusting for GDP per capita makes Nigeria the market where the subscription weighs heaviest against local means, while Luxembourg carries it most lightly.
Additionally, taxes, duties, and market-specific costs also change the number your customer actually pays. VAT rates vary considerably across Europe, conventions differ on whether tax appears in the displayed price, and customs duties can produce a surprise at the door that no amount of good marketing recovers from.
Let’s not forget consumer expectations and pricing psychology shape how a number is received before anyone calculates anything. Conventions around round figures, charm pricing, and culturally significant digits differ from market to market, so a price that signals value at home can read as arbitrary or unlucky elsewhere.
Lastly, local payment preferences decide whether the sale completes at all. Shopify found that 49% of surveyed US and UK consumers would abandon a purchase without their preferred payment option, and those preferences shift sharply by country.
Why Price Localization Matters
Improve Customer Trust and Purchase Confidence
A price in local currency, formatted correctly, with tax treatment matching local norms, tells the customer this business understands their market. Baymard Institute research puts average documented cart abandonment at 70.22%, with 39% of those who give a reason citing extra costs and another 14% leaving because they cannot see the total upfront. Both triggers are pricing presentation problems rather than pricing problems.
Stay Competitive in Local Markets
A carefully calculated domestic price may land absurdly above or below local alternatives, and either direction causes damage. Pricing too high loses the sale, while pricing too low makes premium positioning almost impossible to recover later.
Increase Conversions and Revenue
Every unnecessary calculation a customer performs is an opportunity to reconsider, and removing that friction converts more of the traffic you already paid to acquire.
Step-by-Step Guide to Localizing Your Price
1. Research the Target Market
Start with the economics. Look at average and median income, GDP per capita, and cost of living, then work out what your product costs as a share of what people there genuinely earn.
Then look at behaviour. Numbers alone will not tell you whether customers favour subscriptions or one-off purchases, how much they expect to be discounted, or which seasonal events drive their spending.
2. Analyze Local Competitor Pricing
Identify the businesses your customers will compare you against, which frequently are not the competitors you face at home. Make a point to note their price points, tiering, discount rhythms, and where they sit on the value spectrum, then decide deliberately where you want to sit relative to them. A position you choose is defensible in a way that a position you drift into is not.
3. Choose a Pricing Model for Global Expansion
There are three broad approaches to go about this:
- Uniform global pricing keeps one price everywhere, which is simple to administer and easy for customers to understand. The downside to this, however, is that it ignores purchasing power and tends to price you out of emerging markets.
- Market-based pricing sets each price independently against local conditions, maximizing revenue market by market while demanding considerably more work and creating visible discrepancies customers can find.
- Regional or zone pricing groups similar markets together, capturing much of the benefit without maintaining a separate price point for every country on the map.
Whichever approach you choose, expect customers to notice the differences, because entire websites exist to track exactly these gaps across major subscription services.
4. Adjust for Taxes, Duties, and Compliance Requirements
Establish which taxes apply, who collects them, and whether local convention displays prices inclusive or exclusive of tax. European customers generally expect the price on the label to be the price they pay, while US shoppers are accustomed to tax appearing at checkout.
For physical goods, calculate the landed cost including duties and shipping, then show it before checkout. Surprise fees at the door produce refund requests, chargebacks, and reviews you would rather not read.
5. Localize Currency, Payment Methods, and Billing Preferences
Always display prices in local currency automatically rather than asking visitors to switch manually. Round to figures that look deliberate in that market. A converted price of ¥1,800 reads better than ¥1,847.
Offer the payment methods people in that market use, and make sure billing descriptors, invoices, and receipts arrive in the local language as well. A customer who cannot recognize a charge on their statement will dispute it.
This is also where pricing meets the rest of your customer experience. A well-localized price loses much of its value inside a checkout flow that still reads as foreign. Our localization services exist to close that gap across the whole journey.
6. Test and Optimize Your Pricing
The best way to test and optimize your pricing is by treating your first localized price as a hypothesis. Run A/B tests where volume allows, and track conversion rates, average order value, refund rates, and cart abandonment separately for each market rather than only in aggregate.
Make sure to revisit the numbers periodically since exchange rates change, competitors reprice, and inflation moves at different speeds in different places. Netflix itself raised its US Premium price twice inside two years, most recently in March 2026, which is a reasonable indication that even the most sophisticated pricing operations treat their numbers as provisional.
Getting the Number Right
Currency conversion answers a mathematical question, while price localization answers a commercial one about what your product is worth to someone earning a local wage.
Getting it right means weighing purchasing power, competition, taxes, psychology, and payment habits together, then presenting the result in language and formatting that feels local. Language matters here more than pricing discussions usually acknowledge, since CSA Research found that 76% of consumers across 29 countries prefer to buy products with information in their own language and 40% will not buy from sites in other languages at all. A perfectly calculated price on an unlocalized page still loses the sale.
At EC Innovations, our localization services help businesses adapt the entire customer-facing experience for new markets, covering websites, product content, checkout flows, and everything surrounding the moment somebody decides to buy.
Contact us to talk through your expansion plans; we’re here to listen.
