Chapter 5

Pricing strategies

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter you will: n n

appreciate the strategic significance of pricing decisions in marketing strategy understand the approaches to pricing of the economist and accountant, together with their contributions and limitations in the context of the price setting process n apply a framework to pricing decisions based around the key inputs to these decisions n understand the main pricing methods and their relative advantages and disadvantages

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Pricing strategies

INTRODUCTION
The price of a company’s products and services represents the vehicle for that company to achieve its financial objectives. It is through price and volume that revenue is generated. Price equates to the financial sacrifice that the customer is willing to make to purchase the product or service desired. The important criterion of pricing is problematical to marketers. This is attributed to the uncertainty associated with pricing decisions as it is a complicated area of decision making. It is with a view to examining this problem and the ways in which it can be resolved that his chapter is framed. The pressures of today’s market environment place increasing burdens on management. It is important, therefore, that the decision maker has a framework for making pricing decisions. We start by examining the traditional economist’s view of price to illustrate both the shortcomings and potential contributions of this approach as a prelude to discussing more strategic pricing approaches for the decision maker.

THE ECONOMIST’S VIEW OF PRICING
Traditionally the economist has looked at price and pricing decisions from the perspective of price being determined by the interplay of demand and supply. At a broader level, the economist views pricing decisions as an ‘allocatory’ mechanism, with prices being used as the signal to solve the basic