Top 6 – November 2010

timjsmith

Tim J. Smith, PhD
Founder and CEO, Wiglaf Pricing

Published November 6, 2010

“There are three potentially successful generic strategic approaches to outperforming other firms in an industry: 1 Overall Cost Leadership; 2. Differentiation; 3 Focus.”
Michael Porter

One of those strategies is inherently precarious due to excessive market myopias: Overall Cost Leadership.
Tim J. Smith

  1. It’s a bad idea to lead with price in advertising
  2. A cost-based price is not a price we ever want to offer the market.
  3. Mature industries tend to converge to an industry structure supporting three large generalists.
  4. Small specialists tend to be highly profitable in mature industries.
  5. In today’s marketplace there is such a profusion of similar brands and products that the consumer encounters the big blur.
  6. When you see a highly successful company in a highly competitive field, there is a good chance that company got there by successfully differentiating from the “blur.”
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About The Author

timjsmith
Tim J. Smith, PhD, is the founder and CEO of Wiglaf Pricing, an Adjunct Professor of Marketing and Economics at DePaul University, and the author of Pricing Done Right (Wiley 2016) and Pricing Strategy (Cengage 2012). At Wiglaf Pricing, Tim leads client engagements. Smith’s popular business book, Pricing Done Right: The Pricing Framework Proven Successful by the World’s Most Profitable Companies, was noted by Dennis Stone, CEO of Overhead Door Corp, as "Essential reading… While many books cover the concepts of pricing, Pricing Done Right goes the additional step of applying the concepts in the real world." Tim’s textbook, Pricing Strategy: Setting Price Levels, Managing Price Discounts, & Establishing Price Structures, has been described by independent reviewers as “the most comprehensive pricing strategy book” on the market. As well as serving as the Academic Advisor to the Professional Pricing Society’s Certified Pricing Professional program, Tim is a member of the American Marketing Association and American Physical Society. He holds a BS in Physics and Chemistry from Southern Methodist University, a BA in Mathematics from Southern Methodist University, a PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Chicago, and an MBA with high honors in Strategy and Marketing from the University of Chicago GSB.