Archives posted in: Pricing
There are three key questions that must be asked for every pricing problem. Each must be asked from the customer’s perspective, not your own. Number 1: What is the alternative? Number 2: Are you better or worse? And Number 3: Why should I expletive care?
More Prices are too high for our customers. Sales is giving away our product. We have heard these claims. Many times. These arguing points between the professionals who manage customers and those who manage prices have been fought over for aeons. Yet which group is right?
To address the issue of pricing and account management, let us leverage the research by Miller and Heiman into the creation of thought leadership in pricing.
$700 is the price a couple would pay for the best seats to see Hugh Jackman Back on Broadway this month. With a runaway hit, producers have raised prices several times. Orchestra seats that were priced at $155 are now priced at $175. Premium seats that were priced at $250 are now priced in the range of $275 to $350, depending upon demand for specific performances. Their decision to use dynamic pricing has placed Hugh Jackman’s essentially one-man-show in the top earner position on Broadway with roughly $1.5 million in ticket sales for the week ending November 20th, 2011.
With pricing success like this, one can suspect that more executives may benefit from considering the value of dynamic pricing.
More In order to fully capture potential profit contributions, a firm must be able to successfully execute price segmentation tactics on a consistent basis. Faced by a dynamic market, firms require regular price maintenance to ensure segmentation hedges remain effective. Efficient price discrimination techniques that involve limited cost to identify market segments and mitigate the existence of a secondary market, truly contribute to a firm’s bottom line. Understanding the theoretical concepts of price discrimination discussed in a standard economics textbook only scratches the surface of the knowledge needed to implement a profit generating pricing strategy. This article will attempt to provide the connection between pricing theory and where the rubber meets the road.
More Salespeople abuse discounts. Pricing is the sales destruction department. Well, which group is right and must they keep fighting? In this article, we explore the role of price segmentation in strategic account selling.
More In a marketing blunder that rivals Coca Cola’s (temporary) abandonment of its original formula in favor of the sweeter “New Coke,” Netflix (NFLX), despite its incredible success and customer affection, decided to raise its prices 60 percent. Stock tumbled 19 percent. One million customers instantly abandoned Netflix. Was this incredible greed, stupidity or just plain ignorance?
More Groupon has shown the world a new way to do coupon promotions, but is it any better than traditional couponing? In this article, provide an academically proven and industry best-practice approach for evaluating coupon promotions, be it Groupon or any other type of couponing.
More Preventing the Resale of Sporting Event Tickets
StubHub, TicketNetwork, and eBay are marketplaces that allow customers to buy and sell unwanted tickets. For example, a season ticket holder uses StubHub as form of consignment to sell a Dallas Mavericks basketball ticket to a consumer that is available and willing to attend the game. The sellers of tickets in the secondary market are capitalizing on possessing elastic demand characteristics. But what about the team owners?
More Last year, a Malaysian executive told me that she must compete on price because Malaysians only buy on price. This year, an Indian executive told me that he only sells commodities because that’s what his nation buys. On both occasions, I countered with a strong push to find ways of meeting their customer’s needs better to reduce downward price pressures associated with selling commodities.
More As the global economy continues to be stressed and prices for all kinds of raw materials continue to rise, manufacturers are looking for ways to preserve profits. Although manufacturers are substituting materials where they can and locking in long-term contracts to protect themselves from price hikes, they may ultimately face the conundrum of passing along rising costs in the form of price increases to their customers. Will it work? Mixed results.
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