浅谈市场营销中的定价策略正文

Simple Discussion on Pricing Strategies in Business Marketing

1 Introduction

With more and more companies entering into the competition of marketing and countries becoming more open to each other, consumers are now facing ever more choices when they selecting the things they want to buy. How can companies stand out in this competitive market world and win the heart of its customers? The only answer to this question is to create more value on the products and services that going to sell to customers and price its products or services as low as possible. Take a glimpse around us you will see how important the price is to our daily lives. For instance, when people are intending to buy certain things, whether they are luxury items or daily necessities such as clothes, furniture, house, cars, books, everything. Normally, they would visit several places and check the prices. Therefore, there is an old Chinese saying, “When you buy things, you would not be cheated if compare the prices from three stores”. So price plays a very important role in attracting customers to buy the products you offer and the prices have to be set according your company’s Marketing Strategy and Product Positioning.

2 Basic concepts about Pricing Strategies in Business Marketing

The price is a amount of money charged for a product or the value exchanged for the benefits of the product or service. The price normally reflects the relative quality of the product, of course, covers all costs associated with production, marketing, after-sale service. A right pricing strategy will help you acquire the biggest profit. Furthermore, Pricing strategy is one of the four major elements of the marketing mix. It is related to product positioning, affects other marketing mix elements such as product strategy, channel strategy and sales promotion strategy.

3 Factors that Influence the Prices

3.1 Inner Factors that Influence the Prices

There are so many factors existing inside an organization that affect the setting of price and all of them can hardly be overcome, such as pricing target, raw material cost, production cost, transportation cost, sales cost. Though these factors are unremovable, we can maximize company’s profits by reducing the negative impact of these factors, optimizing the use of resources and lowering the relevant costs or finding alternatives. 3.1.1 Organization Policy

Every organization has its own policies, such as product policy, quality policy, environment policy, enterprise culture, etc. These policies, in the end would affect organization’s pricing strategy to some extent. For example, a pump manufacturer promises its customers that if the customer found the pump purchased from the company has any problems within five years they would replace the parts free of charge for its customers and send the repairmen to the application spot within 72 hours after receiving the call from the customer. This is a good phenomenon and the customer would be very satisfied because of good after-sale services. However, manufacturer, of cause had already added all the costs associated with replaced parts and quick after-sale services to the price of product itself before he promised his customers for the simple reason that the cost for replacing defective parts and cost for sending his repairmen to customer’ side could be much more expensive than the total price of pump itself. In other words, It is customer himself who paid for the replaced parts and quick services and the product price of this manufacturer is much higher than other manufacturers or agents due to free parts and quick services that manufacturer provides.

3.1.2 Pricing Target

To survive in today’s highly competitive marketplace, companies need pricing objectives that are specific, attainable, and measurable. Realistic pricing goals then need periodic monitoring to determine the effectiveness of the company’s strategy. Generally speaking, the pricing objectives can be divided into two categories: profit-orientated objectives, sales-oriented objectives. Therefore, profit-oriented pricing objectives include profit maximization, satisfactory profits, and target return on investment.

Profit maximization means setting price so that total revenue is as large as possible