Smarter Pricing

Smarter Pricing

How to capture more value in your market

Tony Cram

Dec 2005, Hardback, 232 pages
ISBN13: 9780273706137
ISBN10: 0273706136
£24.99
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From airline tickets to bottled water, health clubs to student textbooks; price can have a profound impact in the market. Pricing decisions, right or wrong, can change buying behaviours, drive the profitability of businesses and even transform competitive landscapes.

For the price of a flexible economy ticket to Warsaw with British Airways, a traveller could buy 8 return flights with Air Polonia. How do companies like British Airways fight back against the value players? With profitability and competitive stakes high, pricing decisions are too important to leave to rules of thumb. Managers everywhere are devoting more attention to the art and science of pricing.

Smarter Pricing helps managers to make more intelligent pricing decisions, implement pricing strategies and structures more effectively in the market, and capture more value for their business. Using real-world international examples from a wide range of industries, Smarter Pricing explores: low price propositions, premium pricing, price sensitivity, incentivising customers to make profitable purchases, the rise of discounters and how to face the threats, the creative communication of pricing and bundling, promotions and and the benefits of non-comparability.

"Downward pressure on prices has rarely been stronger. A slogging global economy has had an impact, but so have fundamental changes in the marketplace including stronger buyers, more transparent markets, and the emergence of low-cost manufacturing powerhouses such as China........the need to get price management right could scarcely be more urgent. "THE POWER OF PRICING-McKinsey Quarterly, Jan 05.

Smarter Pricing

How to capture more value in your market

Contents

1. Pricing by voodoo or bingo? – there’s a better way.

CUSTOMERS - SMARTER WAYS TO UNDERSTAND THEM

2. When they say price, they really mean value

3. What would you pay for this? – perils and pitfalls of pricing research

4. Price discrimination – segmenting by price sensitivity

5. Customers behaving badly – how price can help

COMPETITORS - SMARTER WAYS TO OUTWIT THEM

6. Standing out from the crowd – pricing’s role in positioning and differentiation

7. Competing with value players – hit back with benefits

8. Fighting price wars – planning to escape pain

COMPANY SUCCESS – SMARTER WAYS TO CAPTURE VALUE

9. Fixing the right price – structures, segments and stairways

10. Communicating prices – creating positive perceptions

11. Why pay more? – how to get higher prices

12. Pricing success – keeping discipline, measuring results

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY & LAST WORD

13. Smarter pricing – the five minute version

The last word on price

Tony Cram is a Programme Director at Ashridge Business School - one of Europe's leading centres for Management Development. Tony designs and delivers programmes on business strategy and market innovation.

Internationally he has taught at Swedish Institute of Management, Vlerick

Leuven Gent Management School, Stockholm School of Economics, PEF

University Styria, and University of Michigan, USA.

Tony has a particular interest is in understanding Customer Value,

developing brands and the dynamics of long-term business relationships. He

speaks at public conferences on competitive marketing and innovation, and

has written and contributed to many books including- Customers that Count

How to build living relationships with your most valuable customers.

(Financial Times Prentice Hall 2001), The Power of Relationship Marketing

(Pitman Publishing 1996, paperback ed. 2002).

" ... this crisp, comprehensive book by a marketing and strategy expert... cannot fail to pay dividends" - Director Magazine, February 2006