Smarter pricing - Tony Cram

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.