A Couple of Squares is a company specializing in producing and selling gourmet cookies to retail stores. Recently, A Couple of Squares has been brainstorming the idea of starting an e-commerce website so they can sell there gourmet cookies directly to consumers instead of selling to retailers. There are many considerations that need to be evaluated when deciding to launch an e-commerce website. First, the risks of launching an e-commerce site and the steps to mitigate the risks must be evaluated. Along with the risks of launching an e-commerce site, the benefits of launching an e-commerce site also need to be taken into account. In order to seek profitability a break even analysis must be performed. Once profitability is feasible, A Couple …show more content…
A Couple of Squares should price their products based on customer value since there is no relationship between customers’ value for a product and the company’s costs. A Couple of Squares currently uses a cost based pricing system. Using a cost based pricing system can undercut profits due to customer value. If customers are willing to buy cookies from A Couple of Squares for twenty dollars and A Couple of Squares is only charging five dollars, they are losing out on a significant amount of profit. Basing pricing on customer value would also keep customers satisfied. Customers would be satisfied since the company is focusing on their individual needs. If the company prices their products based on customer value, the customer will be willing to buy the product because it is at a price they are willing to pay. Therefore, pricing based on customer value would maximize profits as well as customer …show more content…
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
Firm E also has higher technological capability to reach out to market segment that our firm dominates. It has also been noted that the stock price of Firm E rose $7 to $50, increasing its value and giving the firm an incredible amount of capital to be invested for market capture. It has also been identified that our firm mostly compete against other players in market segments that are more price sensitive than those in others. This generally results in generating low returns when the cost of competition is high. For this particular market segment, however, price-based competition does not necessarily lead to increases in the size of the marketplace. Although, price-based competition is minimized with minimal gross margin for economy products, this competition could be intensified by providing our customers with rebates, preferred financing and long-term warranties. With such immediate capital available at hand, firms such as Firm E can attract our customer at its
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.
A perfect competitive firm is defined as: “a market structure with many fully informed buyers and sellers of a standardized product and no obstacles to entry or exit of firms in the long run.” The four characteristics of a perfectly competitive firm include the following: it must consist of many buyers and sellers, firms sell a particular commodity, buyers and sellers are fully informed about the price and availability of all resources and products, and firms and resources are freely mobile. These four characteristics contribute to the reason why a perfectly competitive firm is unable to become a “price-maker” (perfectly competitive firms are unable to make up their own prices) and must be a “price-taker”. As a result of being a “price-taker”,
With several thousand commercial Web sites to consider, there are a great variety of e-commerce business models.
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.
Purchasing decisions essentially revolve around price. Price is affected through market competition. Therefore, manufacturers control pricing on products as well as the amount of production produced to meet market demands. These decisions are influenced by the type of industry in which these organizations operate. Economists divide the market into four distinct market structures: pure competition, monopoly, oligopoly and monopolistic competition. This paper will differentiate among the various market structures, while identifying pricing and non-pricing strategies within each market structure.
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.
At first sight the equation appears to reverse the familiar cost plus price equal profit that many firms use. However, behind the inversion of the equation are two very powerful ideas; (1) market price and profit margins are exogenous variables beyond the control of an organization’s management; and (2) customer and financial markets drive cost planning and not the other way around. Target costing, therefore, is a market driven system in which the needs of the customer and the likely reaction of competitors drive product and profit planning.
Price is the amount of money paid by customers to purchase the product. Margin account should be taken into account in the decision as a response to the possibility of a competitor according to quickmba, 2004. The price which is creates sales revenue. For example is the cost. The price of goods is an important factor in the value of sales made. In theory, prices should be determined according to customer demand with the goods sold are affordable. Customers will researching the prices of goods sold because it shows how they appreciate what they are looking for and what they want to pay. The price is not issue to my restaurant. This is because my restaurant offers the price that customer can afford. We are offers a premium and medium price to the customer compare to other restaurant. Besides that, we also offering a high quality in service compare to other. For example, other restaurant they offer the best quality food at the highest prices compare to us we are offer a high quality food and service at the premium and medium
The main objective of any individual or group going into business is to make profit. Their profit is the difference between the cost of providing the good or service and the actual cost to the consumer. As more companies venture into the same line of business the competition for customers gets intense thus bringing into play the law of supply and demand. Oversupply of a good or service pushes the price consumer has to pay down. These forces have pushed managers and business strategists into the search for ways to increase the bottom line while reducing cost of good or service delivery.
With supply solely, factors involved with regulation of the supply also control some aspects of demand. Things such as production costs and desired net profit can determine whether a business succeeds or not. Having a balance between quantity and price is the greatest control any business can have. Pricing is obviously one of the most beneficial, or destructive, parts of a business. Pricing is the first and most valuable thing an individual will look at, which will overrule most other judgments based off of quality and detail. Balancing the price, however, helps to create a pristine product, with just the right amount of detail that will fuel the market, while still generating a steady net income.
Calabrese and De Francesco (2014) say that the correct pricing strategy can help companies get more profits, demand-based pricing strategy is based on customer preferences and spending intentions, it is more difficult to achieve, but using Blueprint can help companies analyse customer psychology, and the company can successfully use the demand-based pricing. Customer perception of service, depending on the distinct service, service attitude are important for demand-based pricing, when the company 's services can meet customer demand in a high level, it will increases the value of the services, customers will be spend more money on this service at this time (Calabrese and De Francesco, 2014). From the above blueprint, adjust product and service sectors is to increase the value of the products, when provide free adjusted or design to customers, they will feel just the same money to get more services, also in the after-sale service, customers can continue to enjoy the service, the product may not broke, but to retain this service will allow customers are satisfied. It can be seen that customer like the service include more value, the role of Service Blueprint is to found which
product price to reflect the value or reduce the price to attract more customers to purchase
The second market structure is a monopolistic competition. The conditions of this market are similar as for perfect competition except the product is not homogenous it is differentiated; thus having control over its price. (Nellis and Parker, 1997). There are many firms and freedom of entry into the industry, firms are price makers and are faced with a downward sloping demand curve as well as profit maximizers. Examples include; restaurant businesses, hotels and pubs, specialist retailing (builders) and consumer services (Sloman, 2013).
In FY20xx online sales of chocolate accounted for about 20% of total chocolate sales around the globe. All of the company’s current major competitors already have an established online presence of at least 3-5 years. This serves as another major reason as to why we need to implement the e-commerce program to stay competitive in the market.