Archives posted in: Pricing

Strategic Movements: February 2017

By Tim J. Smith, PhD February 7, 2017

Dismal earnings have been reported at Macy’s, JC Penney, Kohl’s, Barnes & Noble, Sears, and many other retailers—countered by increase sales at Amazon.com. Even Walmart is investing in online capabilities, begging the question will all physical retail fail?  No.

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Price is a Verb

By Tim J. Smith, PhD January 3, 2017

So what do executives get wrong about pricing? They treat it as a noun not as a verb. Treating price as a verb drives executives to define the culture, organizational structure, and process for making pricing decisions. Leading firms do this. Failing firms don’t. Executives, you have a choice.

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Strategic Movements: January 2017

By Tim J. Smith, PhD January 3, 2017

“Discounting becomes a drug that is hard to get off, and creates this basis for consumer to not trust regular prices,” Uri Minkoff.

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Nicholas Woodman: Learning in Business is the Ultimate Action Sport

By Tim J. Smith, PhD December 10, 2016

I suspect Mr. Woodman believed that the GoPro could become the hot item for the holiday season. But $400 seemed a bit high for the average consumer. Why not drop it? If the price was lower, then more people may buy it, and GoPro may become a consumer product giant. Perhaps it could join the leagues of Apple, Cannon, and Sony?

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Five Pricing Best Practices for Organizations

By Kyle T. Westra December 10, 2016

Dedication to understanding its customers makes a company more knowledgeable about the competitive landscape and better equipped to anticipate changing conditions. The entire company feels less insular and more connected to its existential purpose: serving customer needs profitably.

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Price Transparency VS Pricing Transparency

By Kyle T. Westra October 5, 2016

For Amazon Web Services (AWS), on the other hand, while your final price depends on your usage, the pricing is transparent down to the hour. While you may not know the amount due ahead of time, you know exactly how they will arrive at that number.

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What Exactly Is Target Transaction Pricing?

By Tim J. Smith, PhD September 1, 2016

Notice the deal specificity. Target prices are deal dependent. That means it can vary between customers and between selling opportunities with the same customer. Target prices may be customer dependent, product mix dependent, quantity dependent, promotional timing dependent, competitive situation dependent, or even cost dependent.

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Pricing Done Right

By Tim J. Smith, PhD August 3, 2016

Pricing Done Right provides a roadmap for improving pricing practices within any market-oriented firm. It provides a framework for managing pricing decisions in any organization. It clarifies the best practices for defining the organizational culture, architectural hierarchy, and routines for getting pricing done right.

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Will Culling Low Margin Items Actually Destroy Profits? An Exploration into Economies of Scope

By Tim J. Smith, PhD July 3, 2016

Firms often sell low margin items because customers seek the low margin items and, when buying, buy higher margin items as well. These low margin items can make sense through their enablement of the firm to profit from economies of scope. Killing low margin items can make sense in some cases, but other cases doing so will kill the firm.

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Hearsay When Proof is Illegal: A Legal and Ethical Pricing Challenge in Business Markets

By Tim J. Smith, PhD April 4, 2016

Agreed, the signal may not be exact when using publically available information to benchmark competitive prices. It may not be exactly precise even when found from market research. But it will generally suffice for most pricing questions. In many cases, it must suffice.

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