The Queen of Marketing (The Market Pricing and Price Policies)
The book deals with the process and structure of market pricing as well as the priorities and methods of price policy. It subjects to a detailed analysis the factors of demands and their interrelation, interaction, and combination into an integral formula of demand. A special attention is paid to building particular formulas of demand, for individual markets (commodity groups) and to estimating their potential capacity. At that, it is demonstrated how to do (in certain limits) with generally accessible or informal sources without resorting to expensive direct marketing research.
The key elements of costs most important to price making are marked out, their interconnections being scrutinized. The role of the expected (planned) profit in the choice of price policy is shown. The ways and means of adjusting the basic price to the conditions of various segments of market are exposed. The author describes his own method of revealing the price parity (comparing the prices for rival goods with essential quality differences). It is displayed how the price alternatives are formed. The way of conversion of the basic price into actual one is traced. The factors to be taken into account, and guidelines, including psychological, the price policy must stick to if it assumes to be effective are considered.
A separate place is assigned to the dynamics of pricing within the life-cycle of goods. The peculiarities of price policy on each stage – from the introduction into market to the deceleration and decline of sales – are brought to light. The author provides hints on maintaining the efficiency of price policy and neutralizing probable threats. Finally, on the base of the suggested by him matrix of pricing as a formal expression of the general line in price decision making, a kind of the distribution of authority between the diverse levels of management is constructed, which secures the flexibility and elasticity of price policy and, in the same time, communicates to it unity and directedness at achieving the common long-range goals.
The text in abundant in examples, charts, tables, matrixes, graphs, and other visual materials, what not only simplifies and makes easier the learning of contents, explicating the notions being introduced and corroborating the inferences, but also allows the reader to feel involved in the decision of price problems. As a result, he acquires skills of independent treatment of information and problems emerging in connection with pricing and price policy, what favors the transference of the methods and procedures used onto his own current activity.
The book is intended for managers and experts, entrepreneurs, teachers and students, for all interested in the inner “mainsprings” and mechanisms of market pricing as well as in the guidelines and principles of making price policy.
Contents
- Introduction
- Demand and market capacity
- The factors of demand and their structure
- Particular formulas of demand
- Market potential
- Express analysis of market
- The making of base price
- The configuration of costs
- Expected profit
- Differentiation and uncertainty
- The competitors’ prices
- Real price and its determinants
- The range of goods and their promotion
- Discounts and markups – the likeness and differences
- The kinds of discounts and their grounds
- The psychology of price decisions
- Price and life-cycle
- The life-cycle of product
- Introduction to market
- The swift growth of sales
- Maturity and decline
- By way of conclusion:
- Price powers and the matrix of discounts and benefits
Keywords: Market pricing, price policy, formula of demand, expected profit, basic and actual prices, psychology of pricing, price parity, price decisions, matrix of pricing.
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