Demand Analysis
Price Elasticity and Decision Making
Abstract
All consumers should aware themselves of the factors involved with price elasticity and how the traits potentially impact their purchases and personal or commercial budgets. Commercial firms have the problem of managing price elasticity with their products and prices and governments have a constant problem of determining taxes from price elasticity. I used three examples to attempt solving how firms manage their products with price elasticity factoring with Proctor & Gamble, the oil, and airline industries. I used government examples of how the attempts to collect data to formulate their policies for taxation on elastic and inelastic products while also describing how the US Postal Service uses price elasticity to compete with corporate competition. Exposure to these factors of price elasticity will generate consumers’ awareness of firms and governments role to determine goods or services at a particular price.
Submit a paper of approximately 1,500 words answering the following question: Analyze why the concept of price elasticity important to (a) firms and (b) government?
Price Elasticity is the measure in responsiveness of consumers to changes in the price of a product or service. The evaluation and consideration of this measure is a useful tool in firms making decisions about pricing and production, and in governments making decisions about revenue and regulation. “Price Elasticity is impacted by measurable factors that allow managers to understand demand and pricing for their product or service; including the availability of substitutes, the consumer budgets for the product or service, and the time period for demand adjustments.” The proper consideration of Price Elasticity allows managers to set pricing such that the effect on Total Revenue is predictable and adjustments to production are timely. The concept of Price Elasticity is employed in the management of commercial firms and government.
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.
In 1983, it became obvious to most observers that a price war would soon ensue, and most likely be initiated by Steinberg. One firm, Hudon and Deaudelin, wanted to be prepared in the face of such a price war and had a study based on pricing experiments performed. To summarize, the experiment was performed and found that different price elasticities existed for differing products. The difference was mainly in the products ability to be stored for long periods of time, and that by raising prices of stock-up items and lowering the prices of non stock-up items, one could minimize the loss to margin and continue to fund the price war.
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
Choose one of the following topics and write a well-organized essay with evidence supporting the statements you set forth. Your response should be two pages, double spaced with a 12 font in Times New Roman:
1. Analyze the article that you were assigned. For this question only, you may use point form. (30)
By applying consumer choice theory and marginal analysis to business problems all relate the income of the consumer as well the price of the product of service. When one considers the purchase for a pair of tickets to a sporting or cultural event one needs to consider family budget, timing, and availability of alternatives. Take for instance tickets to the Denver Broncos game. Substitutes do exist but not at this level of play (high school and college) and not on a Sunday. As a result, as there are alternatives available with the price elasticity of demand measures the responsiveness of quantity demanded to changes in price; it is calculated by dividing the percentage change in quantity demanded by the percentage change in price. (Rittenberg, L. &Tregarthen, T. , 2012). Pricing and consumer behavior rely on the performance of a football team and its overall record. As the team continues to win, demand increases. The opposite happens when the team registers a lower performing season where you would see a decline in
Although firms in oligopolies have competitors, they do not face so much competition that they are price takers (as in perfect competition). Hence, they retain substantial control over the price they charge for their goods (characteristic of monopolies). In my discussion I will use the Australian airline industry to present how oligopolies operate, and to show the different behaviours and strategies that arise from the interdependence of firms. I will mainly concentrate on the domestic airline market in Australia. The domestic airline market consists of a duopoly of two firms, Qantas and Virgin Blue.
Bargaining power of customers looks at the power of the consumer to affect pricing and quality. (Arline,
No single firm can influence market price in a competitive industry; therefore a firm’s demand curve is perfectly elastic and price equals marginal revenue. Short-run profit maximization by a competitive firm can be analyzed by comparing total revenue and total cost or applying marginal analysis. A firm maximizes its short-run profit by producing that output at which total revenue exceeds total cost by the greatest amount.
Businesses use a strategy to determine how much the consumer is willing to pay for a product. To accomplish this businesses offer multiple products that may seem in many ways different but are more or less the same basic product. This pricing strategy shows that consumers set the prices of goods by choosing which products they buy.
In this report, I will be distinguishing Demand and Quantity Demanded by stating the differences between both terminologies. By referring to the textbook which we are using throughout our course plus resources from the internet, I have been able to collect some information about the definitions of demand and quantity demanded. The factors which affect the movement along the curve and shifting of the curve have been stated in the following pages in this report. Demand and Quantity Demanded are different in terminologies and also literally. The demand and quantity demanded curve has differences and it can be seen in the figures which I had pasted below.
Elasticity is also prominent to businesses. The price elasticity of demand is very important for companies to determine the price of their products and their total sales and revenue. Newell showed that by cutting the price of the Left 4 Dead game in half to $25 during a Valve promotion, its sales increased by 3000 percent (Irwin, 2009)viii.
Montgomery, Alan L.; Rossi, Peter E., Estimating Price Elasticities with Theory-Based Priors, Journal of Marketing Research, Nov99, Vol. 36 Issue 4.
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.
When demand is elastic as with Coca Cola products price changes affect total revenue. When the price increases revenue decreases and when the price decreases revenue increases. For Coca Cola if they notice a decrease in revenue they would offer products at a discount to increase revenue. They do this quite often with sales such buy 2 20 oz. bottles for $3 instead of the normal $1.89 each price
One method that Toyota can consider is using the price elasticity of demand to determine whether to increase or decrease the sale price of their automobiles. The responsiveness or sensitivity of consumers to a price change is measured by a product's price elasticity of demand (McConnell & Brue, 2004). Market goods can be described as elastic or inelastic goods as change in quantity demanded for that good. If demand is elastic, a decrease in price will increase total revenue. Even though a lower price would generate lower sales revenue per unit, more than enough additional units would be sold to offset lower price (McConnell & Brue, 2004). In a normal market condition, a price increase leads to a decreased demand, and a price decrease leads to increased demand. However, a change in income affecting demand is more complex.