Archives posted in: Pricing

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Arbitrage With Unofficial Exchange Rates

By Kyle T. Westra December 3, 2015

Much of this has to do with poor economic policy, the low price of oil (upon which much of Venezuela’s exports depend), and the strong dollar. In such situations, dollars become even more valuable to hoard, which in turn creates more inflation in the bolivar, leading to a positive feedback loop. But how does this lead to shortages of something as basic as toilet paper?

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An Overly Simplistic Approach to Pricing Strategy

By Tim J. Smith, PhD November 5, 2015

Pricing strategy is not executed by simply raising prices. If that’s all it took, then every fool would do pricing strategy, and every business owner would have a clear pricing plan.

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Customer Centric Pricing

By Kyle T. Westra November 5, 2015

Without a strong understanding of these customers, as well as the effort to continuously reevaluate this understanding, companies will see their share slip away to better positioned competition. Pricing requires just as much strategy as product; the right product at the wrong price is no longer the right product.

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The Pricing Function: Simple Questions with Complex Answers

By Tim J. Smith, PhD October 6, 2015

Companies that are just beginning to build a pricing team should initially focus on defining the first year’s problems the team must address. Is it a price execution, discounting, setting, or strategy challenge, which most needs to be addressed? In some cases, the performance metric should be something correlated to profits, revenue, and share.

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Semiconductor Socket Wars – II

By Anirban Sengupta October 6, 2015

If a customer doesn’t need to make design changes to change the chip in a socket they are likely to continuously engage with multiple competing suppliers – not just to get the best price but also to secure supply. In fact in some cases customers are reluctant to design in proprietary chips, as they believe that having a single supplier for a product is very risky!

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Semiconductor Socket Wars – I

By Anirban Sengupta September 11, 2015

For a company, a socket means a business. When they talk about winning a “socket” they mean winning a new business. For example let’s say a product uses a microcontroller – all microcontroller companies would be fighting to win the microcontroller socket inside that product and all other such products that use a microcontroller.

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Spotify and Monetizing What Can be Accessed for Free

By Kyle T. Westra September 11, 2015

At a certain level, the method of accessing a certain music track should be a commodity — it is the track that matters, not the delivery mechanism. Instead of differentiating on price, platforms are trying to do so with exclusive artist agreements and various extras for the consumer, as well as additional marketing support for the artist.

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Pricing Isn’t an Event, it’s a Journey

By Tim J. Smith, PhD July 13, 2015

In the price improvement strategy, firms develop the organizational capabilities to manage prices better. Pricing and discount management processes are developed. People are hired to drive those processes. Tools are acquired to accelerate achievements. Cultures are changed towards a profit and discount cautious mentality.

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Deceptive Price Increases: Nothing to Sneeze At

By Gene Zelek July 12, 2015

Although reducing product contents, while maintaining price, remains a viable option for effecting a price increase, care should be taken to do it in a such a way to minimize the chances of a challenge on deceptiveness grounds.

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Price Structure Improvements Drive UPS Earnings Up

By Tim J. Smith, PhD June 10, 2015

In terms of market segmentation alignment, different customers receive different benefits (perceived or real) from the same or similar product. This drives variation in willingness to pay. One goal in improving a price structure is to improve the match between the willingness to pay and the price extracted. It is a form of price segmentation.

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