Pricing and Distribution Pricing is one of the most important elements of the marketing mix as it is the only mix, which generates a turnover for the organization; the remaining 3p's are the variable cost for the organization. It costs to produce and design a product; it costs to distribute a product and costs to promote it. Price must support these elements of the mix. Pricing is difficult and must reflect supply and demand relationship (Constantinides, 2006). Pricing a product too high or too low could mean a loss of sales for the organization. Pricing should take into account the following factors:
• Fixed and variable costs
• Competition
• Company objectives
• Proposed positioning strategies
• Target group and willingness to pay
An organization can adopt a number of pricing strategies. The pricing strategies are based much on what objectives the company has set itself to achieve.
1. Penetration pricing- Is where the organization sets a low price to increase sales and market share.
2. Skimming pricing- The organization sets an initial high price and then slowly lowers the price to make the product available to a wider market. The objective is to skim profits of the market layer by layer.
3. Competition pricing- Setting a price in comparison with competitors.
4. Product Line Pricing- Pricing different products within the same product range at different price points. An example would be a video manufacturer offering different video recorders with different features at different prices. The greater the features and the be...
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...unications would be much valued by the poorer sections of society if it could be used to create opportunities and offered at affordable prices. Thus it targeted a section of society which was unexplored by the other players of the market.
References
Constantinides, E. (2006). The marketing mix revisited: towards the 21st century marketing. Emerald, Vol 22 No 3-4 Literature review. Retrieved November 2, 2008, from ProQuest database.
Mullins, W., Walker, C., Boyd W. (2004). Marketing Management: A Strategic, Decision Making Approach. [University of Phoenix Custom Edition e-text]. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies. Retrieved November 2, 2008, from University of Phoenix, Resource, MBAMK/591¬-- Marketing Seminar in Problem Solving Course Web site.
Reliance Communications (2008). Reliance Communications previews. Retrieved November 2, 2008, from http://www.rpl.co.in
...ts and special deals with PBRs. Thus, the firm’s pricing policy should be flexible enough as not to discourage the price-sensitive consumers and yet allow the company to sustain ever increasing product and service development costs.
A couple of Squares has a limited capacity for which to produce their products and smaller companies tend to have larger fixed costs than bigger companies. Therefore, A Couple of Squares must maximize profits in order to ensure that they will stay in business. A profit-oriented pricing objective is also useful because of A Couple of Squares’ increased sales goals. A Couple of Squares increased their sales goals due to recent financial troubles. Maximizing profits is the easiest way to meet these sales goals due to the fact that A Couple of Squares has limited production capacity. The last key consideration favors a profit-oriented pricing objective because A Couple of Squares offers a specialty product. A specialty product often has limited competition, therefore can be priced on customer value. Pricing at customer value will maximize profits as well as customer satisfaction. A Couple of Squares’ lack of production capacity, increased sales goals, and specialty product favor a profit-oriented pricing
As we learned from Chapter 12, price must be carefully determined and match with firm’s product, distribution, and communication strategies. (Hutt & Speh, 2012, p. 300) Therefore, there should be a strong market perspective in pricing. In order to build an effective pricing policy, marketers should focus on the value a customer places on a product or service. One of the most effective ways to do so is differentiating through value creation.
Setting prices too high would discourage purchasing and setting prices too low negatively affects revenue. While several pricing strategies exist, the use of a value-based pricing system, as implemented at Cabela’s, offers an optimal strategy that meet both customer expectations and company requirements.
The marketing mix, which is basic to any organization, can be considered the ‘controllable’ variables that every business encounters. These controllable variables can be modified based on the uncontrollable variables (external factors found in Environmental Scan) that directly affect business operations. A company focuses on four elements in the marketing mix: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion, which are managed and coordinated through marketing programs in efforts to appeal to their target market. Marketers strive to understand what motivates consumers to purchase certain products. The marketing mix helps to break down some of these questions: What will consumers buy? How much will they spend? Where will they buy? And will they buy again?
Armstrong, Gary, and Philip Kotler. Marketing: an introduction. 11th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2013. Print.
Cravens, D. W., & Piercy, N. F. (2009). Strategic marketing (9th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Company.
Helgeson, James G., and Eric G. Gorger. "The Price Weapon: Developments In U.S. Predatory Pricing Law." Journal Of Business-To-Business Marketing 10.2 (2003): 3. Business Source Complete. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
Pricing is an important aspect of every business. Chief Financial Officer’s (CFO) use pricing to create financial projections, establish a break-even point, and calculate profit and loss margins (Power Point, 2005). It is the only element in the marketing mix that produces revenue. Price is also one of the most flexible elements of the marketing mix as it can be changed very quickly. This is usually done to beat competitor prices in an attempt to fix the product’s market value position very low (Anderson & Bailey, 1998). After all, high prices make it difficult to become the market share leader. The leading US retailer, Wal-Mart, is an expert at low product pricing as evident in 2004 with $250 billion dollars in sales to their 138 million weekly shoppers. However, they are also responsible for reducing prices so low that it drives specialty stores out of business. This is the effect Wal-mart has had on many toy stores and has almost closed the doors of the famous toy store Toys “R” Us Inc.
Armstrong G. & Kotler P. (2007) Marketing: An Introduction 8E Upper Saddle River, NJ Pearson Prentice Hall Publishers
Besides, they approach by producing innovative product with a wide range of smartphone with various operating systems, shapes, sizes and prices to their customers with attractive prices. With comparative items function, Samsung products cost is constantly lower from 10-15%. Samsung has utilized its interior resources and applied to their production system, as a result, this will decrease the cost of production and offer more option to the customers. Diminishing the cost is another strategy for Samsung to attract customer attention and to increase the sales volume. Pricing strategies consist of several different types such as price skimming, competitive pricing, penetration pricing, discount pricing and product life cycle. Samsung utilize different pricing strategies to different product. Firstly, price skimming. It is higher price had been set ahead, before competitors penetrate the market. Therefore, Samsung applies pricing strategy in selling their products, for example hand phone. Once the company releases new model, they will decrease the price of the previous model to compete with another competitor. Second, Competitive in pricing. Samsung utilize a competitive pricing strategy when other organisations offer similar products and services. Samsung set their total cost of a
Commercial firms use Price Elasticity to manage pricing and production decisions, especially in industries where the growth in sales and revenues are the primary measure of a firm’s success. Knowledge of the Price Elasticity for a product or service enables managers to determine the pricing strategy required to get the sales results desired. For example, a firm with a product with a relatively high elasticity would know that a large sales increase can be created with a small price decrease. Conversely, a firm with an inelastic product knows that changes in pricing would have minimal effect on sales.
The pricing strategy will start out rather high for this product upon its release in order to draw a more selective crowd such as the upper class members of the urban society. Once the product has succeeded within this market there will be a development of additional variations of the product which will allow for certain models, with less features, to be sold at a lower price point in order to attract the members of society who are less willing to pay the high asking price for the top of the line version of the
Cravens, D. W., & Piercy, N. F. (2009). Strategic marketing (9th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
...e enough because the company has chosen the best possible way to increase the company performance. The pricing strategy is the company’s best strategy from all because it affected the sales revenue a lot. Although fluctuating the price is quite risky for a business since the customers might order from other companies if the company doesn’t do it properly, but XXX Company manage to done it well so far. The effectiveness might also be seen by the average of sales revenue between January to August from 2011 to 2013.