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Recommended: Negotiation processes
Pricing Strategies (graphics not included)
One of the four major elements of the marketing mix is price. Pricing is an important strategic issue because it is related to product positioning. Pricing also affects other marketing mix elements as well, such as product features, channel decisions, and promotion. A pricing strategy is a course of action designed to achieve pricing objectives. This strategy helps marketers set prices. There are many ways to price a product. The following, figure 1.1, shows a list of five major types of pricing strategies. (Business, 8th Ed., pg 421)
Figure 1.1
New-Product Pricing
There are two primary types of new product pricing strategies, price skimming and penetration pricing. An organization can use one or both of them over a calculated period of time.
Price Skimming involves charging the highest price possible for a short time where a new, innovative, or much-improved product is launched onto a market. The objective with skimming is to “skim the cream” off customers who are willing to pay more to have the product sooner. Prices are lowered once demand falls. (Business, 8th Ed., pg 422)
Penetration Pricing is the opposite extreme; it involves the setting of lower, rather than higher price for a new product. The main purpose is to build market share quickly. The seller wants to discourage competitors from entering the market by building a large market share quickly. (Business, 8th Ed., pg 422)
Differential Pricing
Differential pricing occurs when a company attempts to charge different prices to two different customers for what is essentially the same product. For this to be effective, the market must have multiple segments with different price sensitivities. Differential pricing can happen in several ways: negotiated pricing, secondary-market pricing, periodic discounting, and random discounting. The following describes two of the ways.
Negotiated Pricing happens when the final price is established through bargaining between the seller and the buyer. This occurs in various industries and at all levels of distribution. Prices are normally negotiated for houses, cars and used merchandise. (Business, 8th Ed., pg 423)
Periodic Discounting is the temporary reduction of prices. This normally happens when retailers have holiday sales or seasonal sales. The downside of this is that customers can predict when the price reductions will occur and hold off on buying until the sales take place. (Business, 8th Ed., pg 423)
Psychological Pricing
Psychological pricing is a marketing practice based on the theory that certain prices have a psychological impact.
Setting prices too high would discourage purchasing and setting prices too low negatively affects revenue. While several pricing strategies exist, the use of a value-based pricing system, as implemented at Cabela’s, offers an optimal strategy that meet both customer expectations and company requirements.
Pricing Strategy: We are going to take into consideration inflation, benchmarking and customer trade off. The pricing strategy for the new products/line extensions will be a penetration-pricing strategy to gain customers from other competitors and increase market share. Further, the volume discounts are going to be in the range of 25-40%. Taking into consideration Product lifecycle, those will be raised in the time where new products/line extension are launched.
A couple of Squares has a limited capacity for which to produce their products and smaller companies tend to have larger fixed costs than bigger companies. Therefore, A Couple of Squares must maximize profits in order to ensure that they will stay in business. A profit-oriented pricing objective is also useful because of A Couple of Squares’ increased sales goals. A Couple of Squares increased their sales goals due to recent financial troubles. Maximizing profits is the easiest way to meet these sales goals due to the fact that A Couple of Squares has limited production capacity. The last key consideration favors a profit-oriented pricing objective because A Couple of Squares offers a specialty product. A specialty product often has limited competition, therefore can be priced on customer value. Pricing at customer value will maximize profits as well as customer satisfaction. A Couple of Squares’ lack of production capacity, increased sales goals, and specialty product favor a profit-oriented pricing
Price gouging is increasing the price of a product during crisis or disaster. The price is increased due to temporal increase in demand while supply remains constrained. In many jurisdictions, price gauging is widely considered as immoral and is illegal. However, from a market point of view, price gouging is a correct outcome of an efficient market.
As we learned from Chapter 12, price must be carefully determined and match with firm’s product, distribution, and communication strategies. (Hutt & Speh, 2012, p. 300) Therefore, there should be a strong market perspective in pricing. In order to build an effective pricing policy, marketers should focus on the value a customer places on a product or service. One of the most effective ways to do so is differentiating through value creation.
It is determined by the cost of production, the segment aimed, the capability of the market to recompense, supply and demand, and all other direct and indirect factors. There are more than a few kinds of pricing strategies, each corresponded with the total business plan (Yoo, Donthu et al. 2000). Pricing could also be used to discriminate different brands of product, and to enhance the appearance of a particular company (Kotler and Levy 1969). In this case, Amazon is quite competitive in term of its prices, and has strategic approaches of staying up front of its market competitors (Chevalier and Goolsbee 2003). For instance, when a person is considering to purchase a particular book, Amazon has options whether that individual would prefer a new copy or a used one, and it also presents the prices for these books together with their conditions. A further proposal is to pay to create a premium account, where the items purchased would be delivered quicker. Amazon’s competitive prices also results from the minimum number yet well skilled employees, thus the customers are actually benefitting from the reduced cost of overheads, hence, the low prices of Amazon
Marketing is a process of determining a consumer’s needs, devising a product or service to satisfy those needs, and trying to focus customers on the goods and services you are offering. Marketing is extremely important, and a fundamental building block for business growth. A marketing team is given the task of creating customer awareness through a variety of different marketing techniques. If a business does not pay close attention to their consumer demographic and needs, they will eventually fail over time. Two important aspects of marketing include acquiring new customers, and the preservation and growth of relationships with current customers. Marketing has always been viewed as a creative outlet, which encompassed advertising, distribution, and the selling of goods and services. Marketing staff will also try to anticipate what customers will want in the future, often being accomplished with market research. In summation, a good marketing plan should be able to create a favorable proposition or series of benefits that a customer can value through goods or services. The marketing mix is normally described as the strategic positioning of a product or service in the marketplace, using the specification of the four Ps. During the early 1960’s, Professor E. Jerome McCarthy of Harvard Business School stated that a marketing mix contains four elements. The four key points are product, pricing, promotion, and placement. It is recognized that all these aspects must be present to ensure a successful business model within a given industry. We will now take a thorough look at the four marketing mix points.
In 2009, the San Francisco Giants were the first team to utilize dynamic pricing. Variable and dynamic ticket pricing is determined in real-time and based on a set of demand criteria. Most every other MLB franchise currently employs some form of this pricing system. Dynamic pricing is an approach to setting the cost for a product or service that is highly flexible. The goal of dynamic pricing is to allow a company that sells goods or services over the Internet to adjust prices by a simple click in response to market demands.
The pricing strategy will start out rather high for this product upon its release in order to draw a more selective crowd such as the upper class members of the urban society. Once the product has succeeded within this market there will be a development of additional variations of the product which will allow for certain models, with less features, to be sold at a lower price point in order to attract the members of society who are less willing to pay the high asking price for the top of the line version of the
The company subcontracted the production of the heater/blower unit and manufactured the heating covers in-house.... ... middle of paper ... ... The penetration pricing strategy will attract sales selling these products separately because the main product (heater/blower unit) will be sold at a discount and the complimentary product will be marked up.
Helgeson, James G., and Eric G. Gorger. "The Price Weapon: Developments In U.S. Predatory Pricing Law." Journal Of Business-To-Business Marketing 10.2 (2003): 3. Business Source Complete. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
Pricing is an important aspect of every business. Chief Financial Officer’s (CFO) use pricing to create financial projections, establish a break-even point, and calculate profit and loss margins (Power Point, 2005). It is the only element in the marketing mix that produces revenue. Price is also one of the most flexible elements of the marketing mix as it can be changed very quickly. This is usually done to beat competitor prices in an attempt to fix the product’s market value position very low (Anderson & Bailey, 1998). After all, high prices make it difficult to become the market share leader. The leading US retailer, Wal-Mart, is an expert at low product pricing as evident in 2004 with $250 billion dollars in sales to their 138 million weekly shoppers. However, they are also responsible for reducing prices so low that it drives specialty stores out of business. This is the effect Wal-mart has had on many toy stores and has almost closed the doors of the famous toy store Toys “R” Us Inc.
The second market structure is a monopolistic competition. The conditions of this market are similar as for perfect competition except the product is not homogenous it is differentiated; thus having control over its price. (Nellis and Parker, 1997). There are many firms and freedom of entry into the industry, firms are price makers and are faced with a downward sloping demand curve as well as profit maximizers. Examples include; restaurant businesses, hotels and pubs, specialist retailing (builders) and consumer services (Sloman, 2013).
Besides, they approach by producing innovative product with a wide range of smartphone with various operating systems, shapes, sizes and prices to their customers with attractive prices. With comparative items function, Samsung products cost is constantly lower from 10-15%. Samsung has utilized its interior resources and applied to their production system, as a result, this will decrease the cost of production and offer more option to the customers. Diminishing the cost is another strategy for Samsung to attract customer attention and to increase the sales volume. Pricing strategies consist of several different types such as price skimming, competitive pricing, penetration pricing, discount pricing and product life cycle. Samsung utilize different pricing strategies to different product. Firstly, price skimming. It is higher price had been set ahead, before competitors penetrate the market. Therefore, Samsung applies pricing strategy in selling their products, for example hand phone. Once the company releases new model, they will decrease the price of the previous model to compete with another competitor. Second, Competitive in pricing. Samsung utilize a competitive pricing strategy when other organisations offer similar products and services. Samsung set their total cost of a
It is advisable at this stage to employ the price skimming strategy, for example, pricing the product at the highest point possible. Prices can then be lowered when demand starts to fall. Cash Cows – it’s the most stable for any organisation, the strategy used for the cash cows is to basically maintain its market share.