市场营销价格策略外文翻译文献

市场营销价格策略外文翻译文献(文档含英文原文和中文翻译)

DESIGNING PRICING STRATEGIES

All for-profit organizations and many nonprofit organizations set prices on their goods or services. Whether the price is called rent (for an apartment), tuition (for education), fare (for travel), or interest (for borrowed money), the concept is the same. Throughout most of history, prices were set by negotiation between buyers and sellers.

Setting one price for all buyers arose with the development of large-scale retailing at the en d of the nineteenth century, when Woolworth’s and other stores followed a “strictly one-price policy” because they carried so many items and had so many employees.

Now, 100 years later, technology is taking us back to an era of negotiated pricing. The Internet, corporate networks, and wireless setups are linking people, machines, and

companies around the globe, connecting sellers and buyers as never before. Web sites like and allow buyers to compare products and prices quickly and easily. On-line auction sites like and make it easy for

buyers and sellers to negotiate prices on thousands of items. At the same time, new tech-

nologies are allowing sellers to collect detailed data about customers’ buying habits, preferences—even spending limits—so they can tailor their products and prices.

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In the entire marketing mix, price is the one element that produces revenue; the others produce costs. Price is also one of the most flexible elements: It can be changed quickly, unlike product features and channel commitments. Although price competi- tion is a major problem facing companies, many do not handle pricing well. The most common mistakes are these: Pricing is too cost-oriented; price is not revised often

enough to capitalize on market changes; price is set independent of the rest of the marketing mix rather than as an intrinsic element of market-positioning strategy; and price is not varied enough for different product items, market segments, and purchase occasions.

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Designing Pricing

Strategies and

Programs

We will address the following questions:

■ How should a company price a new good or service?

■ How should the price be adapted to meet varying circumstances and opportunities?■ When should the company initiate a p rice change, and how should it respond to competitive price changes?

224 CHAPTER 12 DESIGNING PRICING STRATEGIES AND PROGRAMS Value Pricing

Value pricing is a method in which the company charges a fairly low price for a high- quality offering. Value pricing says that the price should represent a high-value offer to

consumers. This is a major trend in the computer industry, which has shifted from charging top dollar for cutting-edge computers to offering basic computers at lower prices. For instance, Monorail Computer started selling PCs in 1996 for as little as $999

to woo price-sensitive buyers. Compaq and others quickly followed suit. More recently,

eMachines began selling its PCs for less than $500 without a monitor, targeting the 55 percent of computerless households with annual incomes of $25,000 to $30,000.

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Value pricing is not a matter of simply setting lower prices on one’s products compared to those of competitors. It is a matter of reengineering the company’s oper- ations to become a low-cost pro ducer without sacrificing quality, and lowering prices