1. Why was Dakota's pricing system inadequate for its current operating environment?

Currently, DOP's pricing system is pricing products by adding markup twice, which is marking up the purchased product cost by around 15% to cover the cost of warehousing, distribution, and freight. Then add another markup to cover the approximate cost, for general and selling expenses, plus an allowance for profit.

We found that the existing pricing system is inadequate regarding to following points:

The current pricing system use cost-plus method, it determines the mark-ups at the start of each year, based on actual expenses in prior years, the general industry condition and competitive trends. Costs continue to rise for customers at normal circumstances which may due to various external reasons like inflations, economic situations etc. The current costing system could not cope with the highly competitive market, and the inflation will cause the costs keep increasing to a level that the selling price might not able to cover it. It is because the selling price in based on actual expenses in previous years, while the expenses would still go up with the general inflation.

Only charge a small price premium (up to additional 2% markup) to the new desk top delivery. The new service did attract new customers but the inadequate mark-up of 2% for desktop delivery did not cover the costs of providing the service. If clients utilizing desktop delivery place smaller orders it has a negative effect on profit because costs are not covered.

Also, from the policy of charging customers price based on long-term relationships and competitive situations, we think that it is time-consuming on deciding prices and will cause inefficiencies. Activity based costing should be introduced to the company. It provides a more accurate product cost than the original mark-up method, and makes good