Assignment
• Visit www.lovemarks.com and share your thoughts on Branding and Pricing as it relates.....to "The Future Beyond Brands." Check out the Love/Respect Axis and see just where your favorite brand is sitting. (lmnu graphic)This should be fun, so enjoy it!
• Week Three DiscussionPricing Strategie Read Chapter 14. Select a company and interview the owner/manager regarding their pricing strategies and methods. Report on your findings. Ideally, this will be your current company, but you may need to be resourceful and find a business owner or manager from another company who is willing to visit with you. Your goal is to discover the following:
1-What is the company's pricing objective? For this question, it would helpful to show the interviewee a list of the pricing objectives on pages 389-399 with very brief descriptions. (I suggest that you either highlight the first 1-3 sentences under each objective and then show the interviewee the highlighted descriptions in your text OR simply retype them on another sheet of paper for use in the interview).
2-How sensitive are the company's target customers to changes in price? (I suggest that you give them options on this question such as "highly reactive to price changes," "moderately sensitive to price changes," and "low sensitivity to price changes.") Do they have some target segments that are less price sensitive than others?
3-How much consideration does the company give to competitors' prices when setting their own?
4-What method of pricing do they use to arrive at the final price for the customer? For this question, you should be very familiar with the methods found under "Step 5" on pages 395-402 before the interview, but do not ask the interviewee to select from among them. Instead, simply listen to the description of their pricing method(s) and process. Then, after the interview, try to determine which of the textbook's methods the company uses. You do not need to request or report exact markups or profit margins! You should make this clear when requesting the interview! We are looking for methods of pricing, not exact figures.