Identify the optimum price for your products today.
Manage pricing policy for the long-term health of your business.
Seeking the Optimum Price
The expected goal of pricing policy is to maximize long-term earnings. While this is a simple concept, it is a difficult problem complicated by uncertainties, competitors, multiple products, and segments. The core issue, however, is always customer demand, or how your products or services will be purchased compared to a set of competing alternatives at various prices. The measured customer demand should be the critical driving factor for any pragmatic approach to setting price.
From a practical perspective, the starting point for pricing should be the optimum price, the price that maximizes the short-term earnings, assuming that competitors’ prices remain constant. With knowledge of the market price sensitivity and the marginal costs, potential earnings are computed. As shown in the graph below, the blue line is the expected share at a defined price assuming that the other prices remain constant. The green line represents the earnings as a percent of the maximum earnings over the same price range. The maximum point is the optimum price. Having both the share and earnings allows the business team to estimate the cost in earnings of increasing share.
Define and Implement the Optimum Price
- We guide your team through the entire process, including establishing an implementation plan.
- We provide and manage the external market research most suitable to your business environment.
- We help you install the internal capability and tools to optimize price with other products and services over time.
The Steps to Optimum Pricing
1. Identify the structure of the business.
This involves specifying the competitive set, the relative manufacturing and marketing costs, relevant marketing segments, and the key value elements. The business will need to define product life cycle stage; value structure (brand and performance); and competitive brand positioning.
2. Design, test, and field the appropriate market research.
This should be done by independent marketing research firms. Using the sales force or an internal resource for these studies increases the risk of bias that could adversely impact results.
3. Analyze the data and build pricing support tools.
For the pricing process heuristic, tools and models are developed that allow for the identification of optimum pricing. Dynamic value maps are also developed to help define alternative strategic pricing positions. Typically this analysis goes well beyond the pricing issues to include perceptual, importance and competitive quadrant maps as well as a range of other marketing and quality analyses.
4. Engage the team in workshops to use the tools to set the pricing policy.
It is critical that not only are the policies agreed upon, but that the organization, and in particular the sales forces, supports it. Too many policies fail for lack of support. A major purpose of the analytical approach is to build consensus within the organization. That is, the analytical structure provides a rational approach where opinions are tested against market measurements.
Additional Benefits of Pricing Optimization
- The models developed can be used to conduct "what if" analyses
- The same approach can be expanded to estimate pricing policies for multiple products in the same family
- Consistent with Six Sigma methodologies for Six Sigma practitioners
- Team approach ensures alignment and information sharing
- Pricing approach can be combined with other tools to create a business toolkit that can be upgraded over time
Breakthrough Marketing Technology is a strategy-focused business and marketing consultancy. We provide design guidance, research, and implementation support to companies engaging in pricing strategy and implementation. We use data-driven processes and information technology to support business decisions.
