2005: The Pricing Year in Review

As the New Year approaches, and “slow news days” become more common, it is customary for journalists and broadcasters to do their annual review of the year that has (almost) concluded. “No point re-inventing the wheel or breaking with tradition” I thought to myself when Tim Smith asked if I’d be interesting in contributing a…

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Profiting with Yield Pricing

Increasing numbers of companies are taking elements of “yield pricing” or “yield management,” a pricing strategy originally developed for perishable service sector products and adapting this strategy to new uses. Yield management as been used since the mid-80s in the lodging industries and in airline ticketing. The key variables are: (1) the perishable nature of…

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The Peril of Price Cuts

When I first started teaching marketing to DePaul University undergraduates, I used a textbook that had short one-page cases. In solving the problems and challenges presented in these cases, the students’ universal solution to virtually all the problems ailing any company was “to lower prices.” In reality, cutting prices is not only a lazy and…

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