By Dada Adefolami
A marketing plan may be part of an overall business plan. Solid marketing strategy is the foundation of a well-written marketing plan. While a marketing plan contains a list of actions, a marketing plan without a sound strategic foundation is of little use Marketing strategy has the fundamental goal of increasing sales and achieving a sustainable competitive advantage
Successful business organizations therefore regard marketing as a continuous process, through which actual and perceived customer needs are constantly analyzed and monitored in order to fulfill these needs to the extent that the organization’s resources and capabilities allow.
Return on marketing investment (ROMI) is the contribution to profit attributable to marketing (net of marketing spending), divided by the marketing ‘invested’ or risked. ROMI is not like the other ‘return-on-investment’ (ROI) metrics because marketing is not the same kind of investment
Marketing management is the organizational discipline which focuses on the practical application of marketing orientation, techniques and methods inside enterprises and organizations and on the management of a firm’s marketing resources and activities
Pricing objectives or goals give direction to the whole pricing process. Determining what your objectives are is the first step in pricing
The influences on prices:
The influences on prices can be summarized by the below analysis focus on Mission and Marketing objective and Pricing objective.
1. Costs we have: Marginal, Total absorption and Opportunity.
2. Competition: Type of Market, Price Composition, Non-price competition and Other marketing mix variable.
3. Customers: Consumers, intermediaries, Perceived value of the goods and Nature of the goods
4. Controls : Status, regulation and Contract
5. Competition: Type of Market
Although these might appear to be a natural or normal order in which to deal with these influences, if must be emphasized that, as in all of strategic planning, the process is likely to be iterative. One might have a marketing objective in mind but then find that it will be impossible to achieve it because of cost or competition issues, so the objective has to be revisited. Pricing is certainly a dynamic process as nothing will remain constant: the economy, taste, innovation and above all, perhaps, competitor actions and reactions will change continually, often forcing prices to be re-appraised.
Marketing objectives:
Pricing is ultimately part of an organization’s strategy and should, therefore, go back to where strategic planning should begin: the organization’s mission. There we will find the organization’s purpose, its self-perception, its feeling about its position in the market, and material relating to the organization’s culture and ethics. Pricing cannot be separated from mission.
For example:
1. An organization might have a charitable or not-for-profit purpose, in which case prices for its products and services might be zero or heavily subsidized.
2. An organization might perceive itself to be ‘up-market’, in which case it might have to charge high prices to project quality and exclusivity.
3. Pharmaceutical companies face ethical issues when pricing their life-saving products for both rich markets where they hope to make profits, and for poor markets where there are ethical and social responsibility dimensions.
Pricing objectives
Whereas missions and marketing objectives tend to be long term, in the shorter term there can be a variety of pricing objectives. For example, profit-seeking organisations have to at least break even eventually and, if possible, prices have to be set to allow this. There is, for example, no point in having a mission which is to be upmarket, and then trying to enforce that impression by having prices so high that sales volumes are negligible. Sometimes, the need to survive and bolster cash flows quickly will dictate massive price cuts. Sometimes an organization might reduce its prices, sustaining losses for a while, in the hope of forcing competitors to withdraw from the market.
Costs:
The profit-seeking organizations, revenues have to exceed costs; in not-for profit organizations revenue has to match income. By this stage of studies we should be well aware that any positive contribution (that is when marginal revenues exceed marginal costs) helps to cover fixed costs. To make a profit, revenue has to exceed all costs. What might become more relevant in strategic management is the importance of opportunity costs and of exit costs.
An opportunity cost is the revenue foregone as a result of a decision. If you build on a piece of land, you cannot then sell the land for cultivation, for example, and the sale price foregone is an opportunity cost of the decision to build. Exit costs can arise when trying to abandon a strategy. For example, in some countries large liabilities can be incurred if employees are made redundant. Sometimes clean-up or reparation costs can be triggered if undertakings are closed down. In such circumstances, it might be cheaper to carry on provided marginal revenues just exceed marginal costs. If competitors are in this position then we are likely to suffer great price pressure from them.
Competition:
There are four main types of market, each giving rise to a particular type of competition:
1. Perfect competition. This form of market consists of many small suppliers and customers none of which can influence the market. There is free entry and exit from the market and all supply identical products. Here, suppliers must charge the market price. They cannot charge more because, as the products are identical, every customer would move to cheaper suppliers; there is no point in reducing their prices because all output can be sold at the market price. It is worth noting that the internet has tended to make price and competition much more transparent and that there are sites which specialize in comparing suppliers’ prices.
2. Oligopoly. This special type of market consists of a small number of suppliers supplying identical products. If a supplier increases prices, the others simply have to maintain theirs to gain market share. If a supplier reduces prices, the others must follow suit to maintain their market share. There is therefore little incentive to reduce prices as competitors will follow.
3. Monopoly. In a monopoly market there is only one supplier of a product. The supplier can charge whatever is wished, though demand is likely to vary as a result. This is the great freedom a monopolist has: choose the price to charge so that profits can be maximized. Note that despite that statement, being a monopolist does not guarantee that a profit is made. You might be the sole supplier of something no one wants.
4. Monopolistic competition. This is a very unhelpful, almost self-contradictory term for the type of market this represents. This form of competition means that there are a number of suppliers supplying similar but not identical goods. Essentially, the products are being differentiated in some way and, therefore, can command different prices. Suppliers are competing, but with different offerings.
Price competition means that consumers are motivated primarily by price and usually suppliers will have to offer low prices to succeed. Very often organizations which use a cost leadership strategy adopt price competition. Their products are ordinary, but because their costs are very low (if not actually the lowest) prices can also be kept down.
Many laptop producers use price competition because, for most, their products have been commoditized: they all do the same things, with the same operating systems, run the same application software and have similar reliabilities.
Non-price competition means that consumers pay attention not only to the price of the goods but are also influenced by other marketing mix variables such as the:
1. Quality, brand and features of the goods
2. Promotion activities
3. Place (where the goods or services are obtained).
Essentially, organizations which follow a differentiation or focus strategy will be making use of non-price competition. They seek to make their products different so that they are particularly attractive to consumers, who in turn are willing to pay premium prices. Considering again the laptop producers mentioned above, we could probably argue that Apple uses non-price competition. Its laptops look different and unique, they have a different operating systems and run different (but often compatible) software. This can make it difficult to directly compare prices, but many people have the impression that, insofar as it is possible to compare like with like, Apple machines are more expensive than others. Nevertheless, they sell well and profitably.
Consumers
Suppliers have to keep in mind both what the end consumers are willing to pay and also the profits that will be expected by intermediaries in the supply chain. Many industries have ‘rules of thumb’ about the mark-ups they expect to be able to apply. It is common to segment markets according to wealth so that a company will have a ‘value’ range of goods for poorer or prudent customers who might respond to price competition, and a more exclusive range for better-off customers, who might respond to non-price competition.
Even if there are not different lines of goods for different customer groups, it can still be possible to charge different prices for the same product to different groups. This is known as price discrimination. For example, it is often cheaper to buy electronic goods in the china or US than in Europe. Leakage of goods from the cheaper to the more expensive market must be prevented in some way, so the groups have to be sufficiently separate (or un-informed). The pharmaceutical company example given above is another instance of price discrimination where drugs are sold at high prices within rich economies and often at much lower prices elsewhere. Leakage from one market to the other is reduced by giving the products different names (even though they are pharmacologically identical) and by controlling distribution carefully through hospitals and government agencies.
The perceived value of goods is a concept which is also related to non-price competition and, indeed, to price. We have all, no doubt, been influenced by the thought that a higher price implies goods of a higher value even though we are often essentially ignorant about the merit of those goods. For example, when buying a T-shirt there is a very wide range of prices for a range of garments which are very similar looking. We assume that the expensive T-shirt with the fashionable label is ‘better’ than the cheaper, more basic lines. However, often we really do not know, and might even be paying for the kudos we feel an exclusive label gives us.
Whether goods are necessities or luxuries also influences consumers’ reactions to prices and price changes. This affects the elasticity of demand of the product, which is a measure of how a change in sales volume is caused by a change in price. Goods that have a high elasticity of demand are very price sensitive and are likely to be luxury products that consumers are prepared to do without if the price rises too much. Goods with a low elasticity of demand are relatively unaffected by price changes and are likely to be necessities. As prices rise, demand will stay high because customers need the goods. Note that not all goods are regarded the same way by customers. Some consumers might regard a foreign holiday as the highlight of their year and sacrifice other consumption so that they can afford higher air fares. Other consumers have little interest in going abroad so would immediately react to price increases.
Controls:
Some industries are closely regulated by statute and regulation, and they have little power to choose their own prices. Other industries are able to, or try to, dictate final prices charged to consumers. For example, exclusive perfume and cosmetic producers resist price competition by insisting in their supply contracts that their retailers do not discount their products. Note that not all contractual arrangements are legal. Pricing cartels (competitors fixing prices) are frowned upon by most governments.
Setting prices
Now that we have looked at what can influence prices, we can consider how to set prices. Once again we must refer back to the organization’s mission and objectives as it cannot set prices without reference to its longer term ambitions. In an ideal world, organizations would have full information about:
1. Customers – what would they pay and what is the likely demand?
2. Competitors – what are their products, what are their prices and how do they compete?
3. The resultant costs, revenues and profits arising from a specific price.
In practice, determining much of this information can be difficult, and again it is worth emphasizing that markets are often very volatile and prices might need to be reviewed and changed frequently. Note that ‘price’ includes not just the price level itself, but also the use of discounts (particularly important in business to business sales), and payment terms.
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