Resources

ARTICLES

For Some Businesses, the Higher Price Is Right

Washington Post, 02.10.2009 – One of the most important decisions businesses must make in this recession is what to do about prices. Cutting them seems the obvious move, and thousands of companies, from electronics retailers to Walt Disney World, are doing it. But others, like DuPont, are maintaining prices, and a few, including Colgate-Palmolive and McDonald's, are in some cases even raising them.

Which Price is Right?

Fast Company, 12.19.2007 – It is an urgent question: How can we increase profits if we can't raise prices? The answer demands revolutionary thinking -- new insights about strategy and human behavior, turbocharged with software, mathematics, and rapid-fire experimentation. Is your company ready to master the new era of pricing? Are you prepared to pay the price of failure?

Pricing In a Proliferating World

McKinsey Quarterly, Aug 2006 – Juggling thousands or even millions of price points calls for common systems, greater transparency in performance, and an organizational balance between centralization and decentralization.

Answering RFQs, PDQ

CFO Magazine, 03.01.2004 – New software helps companies optimize prices. One caveat: it often comes with an optimized price.

Price Management: Conventional Wisdom Is Wrong

AMR Research, 02.02.2004 – By properly managing product and services pricing, companies have a tremendous opportunity to add to top- and bottom-line growth. Unfortunately, most approaches are oversimplified and chaotic, leading to margin-losing decisions. Price management can change that.

Price Optimization Adoption Soars In 2004

Forrester Research, 12.05.2003 – Next year, buyers and suppliers eager to improve top-line performance will invest in price optimization. But with competing vendors offering fairly immature solutions, users must customize products and conduct scenario management to assess a fit.

The Price Is Really Right

BusinessWeek, 03.31.2003 – With a Web-savvy system, companies can figure out just what the market will bear.

The Power of Pricing

McKinsey Quarterly, 02.01.2003 – Transaction pricing is the key to surviving the current downturn—and to flourishing when conditions improve.

Welcome to the New World of Merchandising

Professional Pricing Society, Q1 2002 – Retailing is and has always been an inefficient business. Retailers, particularly those that operate large chains, have to predict the desires of fickle customers, buy and allocate complex sets of merchandise, set the right prices, and offer the right promotions for each individual item. Inevitably, there are gaps, often wide ones, between supply and demand, which leave stores holding too much of what customers don’t want and too little of what they do.

Revenue Management Adds ’Right Price’ to Value Chain’s Right Product, Place and Time

Supply Chain Journal: Apr 2002 – Using complex algorithms to analyze a host of market factors and operating constraints, revenue and pricing optimization tools enable companies to maximize margins. The real power of these systems, however, will come when they are fully integrated with supply-chain management.

Strong Margin Improvements From Revenue Optimization

CIO Insight, 03.01.2002 – Pressed by tough times, some companies are using data not just to cut costs, but to boost prices in ways that don't bite back.

BOOKS

Pricing with Confidence: 10 Ways to Stop Leaving Money on the Table

Reed Holden and Mark Burton, 2008 – In Pricing with Confidence, pricing gurus Reed Holden and Mark Burton offer a radically different solution – one that actually builds revenues and profits without lowering prices.. The key? Linking prices charged with the value delivered. The real trick is to bring people from marketing, product development, sales and senior management into the process of discovering and defending the value you create for customers.

The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing: A Guide to Growing More Profitably

Thomas T. Nagle and John Hogan, 2005 – Few managers, even those specializing in marketing, think strategically about pricing. Consider your experiences and observations. Were your company's pricing decisions made in reaction to a pricing problem, or were they carefully planned to exploit an opportunity? When done correctly, pricing becomes a powerful lever to drive profitable growth and achieve strategic business goals.

The Price Advantage

McKinsey Research, 2004 – Over the past decade, companies around the world have largely focused on reducing costs in their business. But by and large they have under-managed the oldest and most impactful profit lever: price. Businesses that develop this advantage, the price advantage, ultimately use their superiority in pricing to outperform their peers and deliver significantly higher returns to their stakeholders.

WHITE PAPERS

Profit Parabolas: Bringing Science to the Art of Pricing

Boston Consulting Group, Sep 2003 – Pricing is rapidly becoming more science than art. But because the science is complex, most managers still rely far too heavily on art—or instinct. As a result, they almost always miss the pricing sweet spot and leave millions of dollars of profit and several points of share on the table. Learning and applying the science of pricing are opportunities to create a new kind of competitive advantage.

KNOWLEDGE

• Login
• White Papers
• Research Papers
• Blog
• Resources