Pricing Strategies Pricing Strategies Pricing is one of the most important elements of the marketing mix, as it is the only mix, which generates a turnover for the organization. The remaining 3pâs are the variable cost for the organization. It costs to produce and design a product; it costs to distribute a product and costs to promote it. Price must support these elements of the mix. Pricing is difficult and must reflect supply and demand relationship. Pricing a product too high or too low could mean a loss of sales for the organization. Pricing should take into account the following factors: · Fixed and variable costs. · Competition · Company objectives · Proposed positioning strategies. · Target group and willingness to pay. Types of Pricing Strategies An organization can adopt a number of pricing strategies. The pricing strategies are based much on what objectives the company has set itself to achieve. Penetration pricing: Where the organization sets a low price to increase sales and market share. Skimming pricing: The organization sets an initial high price and then slowly lowers the price to make the product available to a wider market. The objective is to skim profits of the market layer by layer. Competition pricing: Setting a price in comparison with competitors. Product Line Pricing: Pricing different products within the same product range at different price points. An example would be a video manufacturer offering different video recorders with different features at different prices. The greater the features and the benefit obtained the greater the consumer will pay. This form of price discrimination assists the company in maximizing turnover and profits. Bundle Pricing: The organization bundles a group of products at a reduced price. Psychological pricing: The seller here will consider the psychology of price and the positioning of price within the market place. The seller will therefore charge Php 99 instead Php 100 or Php199 instead of Php200. Premium pricing: The price set is high to reflect the exclusiveness of the product. An example of products using this strategy would be Harrods, first class airline services, Porsche etc. Optional pricing: The organization sells optional extras along with the product to maximize its turnover. This strategy is used commonly within the car industry. The task of the marketing manager is to decide the objectives of pricing before he determines the price itself. Pricing objectives provide guidance to decision makers in formulating price policies, planning pricing strategies and setting actual prices. The most important objective of the companies is to have maximum profits. Pricing objectives: It is necessary that the marketing manager decide the objective of pricing before actually setting price. According to experts, pricing objectives are the overall goals that describe the role of price in an organizationâs long-range plans. The objectives help the marketing manager as guidelines to develop marketing strategies. The following are the important pricing objectives. · Market penetration · Market skimming · Target rate of return · Price stabilization · Meet of follow competition · Market share · Profits maximization · Cash flow · Product line promotion · Survival Market penetration objective: In the initial stages of entering the market, the entrepreneurs may set a relatively low price. This is mainly to secure a large share of the market. In a highly price sensitive market, the businessman may continue to sell his products even without profit. He is interested in growth rather than in making a profit. In the market penetration objective, the unit cost of production and distribution will decrease when the volume of sales attain a particular target. In brief, market penetration objective is an attempt to secure a large share of the market by deliberately setting the low prices. Market skimming objective: Market skimming means utilizing the opportunities in the market to reap the benefits of high sales, increased profits and low unit costs. Some of the entrepreneurs study the buyers needs and try to provide the suitable goods, but charge them high prices. This objective is realized in those markets where the magnitude of competition is very low. The entrepreneurs, in this situation, make profits over a short period. The market-skimming objective would not be meaningful, when the consumer refuses to purchase the goods at the prices fixed by the producers. This pricing objective would be suitable in the markets where the consumers feel that costly goods are of the superior quality. Target rate of return objective: Rate of return is normally measured in relation to investment and sales. The producers enjoying some protection may prefer to earn a target rate on investment. This would be possible where the entrepreneur enjoys a franchise or a monopolistic situation. But in the long run, every businessman attempts to secure an adequate return on investment through price setting. Mostly, middleman like wholesalers, retailers will price their merchandise to earn a particular rate of return on sales. Price stabilization objective: Frequent changes in the prices of product will harm the long-term interests of the companies. Hence, they aim at stabilization of prices. They do not exploit a short supply position to earn the maximum. During the periods of good business, they try to keep prices from rising and during the periods of depression, they keep prices from falling too low. Thus, they take a long-term view in achieving price stability. Meet or follow competition objective: Pricing is often done to meet or even prevent competition. If a company is a price leader, it is better to follow it to ward off the possibility of competition. Market share objective: A company may either have the objective of maintaining the present market share or increase its share depending upon its stature. Particularly, big business houses adopt such pricing that it enables them to retain their market share. If they raise their market share, they may draw the attention of the government and if they shed their share, they may lose revenues. Contrary to this, small business houses are found interested in raising their share in the market so as to reap the benefit of large-scale production. In few cases, firms may sell the products even at a lower cost to capture the market. However, such practice may lead to financial crisis. As a matter of fact, this is an objective to be adopted by new firms cautiously. Profit maximization objective: Profit maximization does not mean profiteering. There is nothing wrong in this policy if practiced over the long run. As a matter of fact, many of the enterprises strive to maximize their profits. Maximization of profits should be on the total output and not on a single item. In such case, consumers do not get dissatisfied since a particular group is not called for paying a high price. While adopting this pricing objective, the marketers should attempt to project their image in the market through sales promotion techniques. The marketers should watch the reactions of the consumers. Profit maximization through price hikes should be sparingly used. Cash flow objective: One of the important objectives of pricing is to recover invested funds within a stipulated period. Most of the time you will find different prices for the cash and credit transactions. Generally, you find lower prices for the cash sales and high prices for the credit sales. But this pricing objective could be implemented with good results only when the firm has monopoly in the market. Product line promotion objective: Product line means a group of products that are related either because they satisfy similar needs of different market segments or because they satisfy different but related needs of a given market segment. While framing the product line, the marketer may also include such goods, which are not popular. The intention of the marketer is to push through all the goods without any discrimination. Thus, the ultimate objective is to increase the overall demand of the goods. In this pricing objective, equal prices are adopted for the entire product line. Survival objective: Perpetual existence of the business over a period is the indication of the sound financial position of the enterprise. All organizations will have to meet expected and unexpected, initial and external economic losses. These enterprises have to pool up the resources to meet all the contingencies through appropriate pricing strategies. Price is use to increase sale volume to level up the ups and downs that come to the organization. Summary: Pricing objectives are overall goals that describe what the firm wants to achieve through its pricing efforts. Because, pricing has itâs ramifications in most functional areas including finance, accounting and production. The major pricing objectives are market share, meeting competition and profit. Pricing policies are based on cost, demand and competition.