122 Posts Found

Pricing may well be the weakest link in the value chain. It has such potential to accelerate revenue and profit growth, yet it is so clearly under-managed at consumer and business-to-business companies alike. There are opportunities for improvement in five areas of pricing strategy.

Content: Article | Authors: Krishnakumar (KK) Davey, Nagi Jonnalagadda, Paul Markowitz | Source: Mercer Management Journal | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

Executives often suffer from pricing myopia. They don’t see the freedom they have to use pricing to enhance the performance of their businesses and even create competitive advantage. Because of their distorted or limited vision, they underestimate their power to manage pricing, mistakenly believe that their customers are paying the amounts stipulated by their pricing guidelines, passively accept the prevailing approaches to pricing in their … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: George Stalk Jr., Peter Stanger, Peter Wetenhall, Philippe Morel | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

Pricing decisions can become significantly more manageable when supported with effective pricing research. The key to it, like with any research, is designing it right and executing it effectively. This article offers a framework, entitled the “5 Cardinal Rules of Pricing Research”, that will help your company make those critical pricing decisions, but also make you more effective in providing the answers.

Content: Article | Author: Paul Hunt | Source: The Advantage Group | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

Different local market environments create quite different opportunities for pricing. You must understand these environments to set prices optimally.

Content: Article | Authors: Cristopher C. Eugster, Eric V. Roegner, Jatin N. Kakkar | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

The past decade has seen a virtual explosion of information about customers and their preferences. This information potentially allows companies to increase their revenues, in particular since modern technology enables price changes to be effected at minimal cost. Pricing decisions have a direct effect on operations and visa versa. This article reviews a number of key linkages between pricing and operations. In particular, it highlights … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: David F. Pyke, Joseph M. Hall, Moritz Fleischmann | Source: Erasmus University Rotterdam | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

Pricing is becoming more science than art. But because the science is complex, most managers rely heavily on art-or instinct. As a result, they almost always miss the pricing sweet spot. A powerful, fact-driven tool called the profit parabola can help managers monitor competitors’ prices, learn how their pricing affects their own position, respond intelligently to competitors’ moves, and test incrementally or radically different pricing … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Marin Gjaja, Peter Stanger, Wouter-Jan Schouten | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

Boost your bottom line by taking the guesswork out of pricing.

Content: Article | Author: Alison Stein Wellner | Source: Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

Balancing relationship building and opportunism leads to a strategy for all seasons.

Content: Article | Authors: Elliott Weiss, Tim Laseter | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

Transaction pricing is the key to surviving the current downturn-and to flourishing when conditions improve.

Content: Article | Authors: Craig C. Zawada, Eric V. Roegner, Michael V. Marn | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

Traditional pricing and promotion strategies are coming up short against the growing pressures from value retailers such as Wal-Mart and Costco. How can retailers improve their tarnished price image and offer customers the deals they want without giving away the store?

This paper discusses A.T. Kearney’s approach to pricing and promotion. We offer a customer-focused strategy in which retailers identify and exploit the items most … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Kearney | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

A great deal of literature on the subject of pricing is littered with arcane terminology and convoluted tools of analysis, to the extent that it is not very helpful for managers who have to make pricing decisions day to day. The purpose of this article is to give an overview of the factors a manager should consider when setting prices, and some common sense guidelines … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Alan Yu | Source: TheWorkingManager.com | Subjects: Management, Pricing

Conventional wisdom holds that the best time to launch new products is in the early stages of an economic recovery, when demand picks up and customers become less price-sensitive.

While this may be true for some, most companies actually miss a significant opportunity to maximize revenue and profits due to dysfunctional pricing strategies, with roots that can be traced to the years before the recovery. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: John E. Hogan, Tom Lucke | Source: MarketingProfs | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

When product companies see the cost of materials rise, the result for consumers is often a price increase (gasoline) or, less often, a smaller amount of product at the same price (potato chips).

Which option is more likely to turn off your customers? For many products, it’s better to reduce quantity than raise prices, conclude Harvard Business School marketing professor John Gourville and University of Texas … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Manda Salls | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

Pricing, the intersection at which untold numbers of buyers and sellers meet every day, lies at the core of any business. Yet it remains misunderstood and poorly managed, according to The Price Advantage, a new book by three consultants at McKinsey & Co. Even executives at successful companies may not fully appreciate how small changes in price can lead to large changes in profitability. Wharton … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Craig C. Zawada, Eric V. Roegner, Michael V. Marn | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

Companies habitually charge less than they could for new offerings. It’s a terrible habit.

Content: Article | Authors: Craig C. Zawada, Eric V. Roegner, Michael V. Marn | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Pricing, Strategy

The two most popular approaches to pricing a new product or service are cost and competitive positioning. But it’s time for a third option: an approach that focuses on value. Unlike the traditional methods, companies use value-based pricing to build a deeper understanding of their customers’ business drivers, align their goals with their customers’ goals, and share in each others fortunes in a way that … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Kearney | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

When Wharton professor Marshall Fisher and colleague Vishal Gaur did a controlled pricing experiment in 18 stores belonging to the Zany Brainy retail toy chain, they came away with a surprising result. The experiment, which had been designed to measure how demand for three separate products varied with price, showed, among other things, that pricing is not always logical. In a paper entitled, “In-Store Experiments … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

Is your store set up to reassure consumers that your prices are good value? Here’s how to tell shoppers that the price you want is also the price they want.

Content: Article | Authors: Duncan Simester, Eric Anderson | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

Frequently varying online prices in response to changing market conditions can maximize returns and create a potential new source of competitive advantage. So why are so few companies putting this strategy to use?

Content: Article | Authors: Ajit Kambil, Vipul Agrawal | Source: Outlook Journal (Accenture) | Subjects: Pricing, Strategy

Ever-changing, ‘dynamic’ pricing may be the wave of the future, but many customers resist.

Content: Article | Author: Laurie J. Flynn | Source: Context Magazine | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing