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Pricing Objectives

    Pricing Objectives

    Survival

    Most executives pursue strategies that align pricing with revenue generation, enabling their organizations to survive and thrive long term.

    LEARNING OBJECTIVES

    Name the different factors that impact a company’s success and survival

    KEY TAKEAWAYS

    Key Points

    • New and improved products may hold the key to a firm’s survival and ultimate success.
    • All business enterprises must earn a long term profit in order to survive in the long run.
    • Just as survival requires a long term profit for a business enterprise, profit requires sales. Sales patterns should be altered to ensure success.
    • Management of all firms, large and small, are concerned with maintaining an adequate share of the market so their sales volume will enable the firm to survive and prosper. Prices must be set to attract the appropriate market segment in significant numbers.

    Key Terms

    • Market Share: The percentage of a market (defined in terms of either units or revenue) accounted for by a specific entity.

    Survival

    Firms rely on price to cover the costs of production, pay expenses, and provide the profit incentive necessary to continue to operate the business. These factors help an organization survive. Most managers pursue strategies that enable their organizations to continue in operation for the long term. Thus, survival is one major objective pursued by company executives. For a commercial firm, the price paid by the buyer generates the firm’s revenue. If revenue falls below cost for a long period of time, the firm cannot survive. Survival is closely linked to new product development, profit, sales, market share, and image.

    New Products

    For several decades, business has come increasingly to the realization that new and improved products may hold the key to their survival and ultimate success. Consequently, professional management has become an integral part of this process. As a result, many firms develop new products based on an orderly procedure, employing comprehensive and relevant data and intelligent decision-making.The continuing development of a successful new product looms as the most important factor in the survival of the firm.

    Profit

    Making a $500,000 profit during the next year might be a pricing objective for a firm. Anything less will ensure failure. All business enterprises must earn a long term profit. For many businesses, long term profitability also allows the business to satisfy company stakeholders such as investors, employees, customers, and suppliers. Lower-than-expected or no profits will drive down stock prices and may prove disastrous for the company.

    Sales

    Just as survival requires a long term profit for a business enterprise, profit requires sales. The task of marketing management relates to managing demand. Demand must be managed in order to regulate exchanges or sales. Thus, marketing management’s aim is to alter sales patterns in some desirable way.

    Market Share

    If the sales of Safeway Supermarkets in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area of Texas account for 30 percent of all food sales in that area, we say that Safeway has a 30 percent market share. Management of all firms, large and small, are concerned with maintaining an adequate share of the market so their sales volume will enable the firm to survive and prosper. Again, pricing strategy is one of the tools that is significant in creating and sustaining market share. Prices must be set to attract the appropriate market segment in significant numbers.

    Image

    Price policies play an important role in affecting a firm’s position of respect and esteem in its community. Price is a highly visible communicator. It must convey the message to the community that the firm offers good value, that it is fair in its dealings with the public, that it is a reliable place to patronize, and that it stands behind its products and services.

    A picture of a McDonald's restaurant.

    Surviving the Recession: Pricing plays a significant role in attracting and retaining market share during tough economic times.

    Profit

    If the sole objective of a firm is to maximize profit, there are various profit maximizing pricing methods that can be used.

    LEARNING OBJECTIVES

    Recall formulas for calculating profit maximizing output quantity and marginal profit

    KEY TAKEAWAYS

    Key Points

    • In launching new products or considering the pricing of current products, managers often start with an idea of the dollar profit they desire and ask what level of sales will be needed to reach it. This can be done through profit-based sales targets.
    • Profit is equal to total revenue (TR) minus total cost (TC). The profit maximizing output is the one at which this difference reaches its maximum. The corresponding price will depend on whether the firm is a perfect competitor. This is the TR-TC method.
    • Marginal profit (Mπ) equals marginal revenue (MR) minus marginal cost (MC). If MR is greater than MC at some level of output, marginal profit is positive and thus a greater quantity should be produced. When MR = MC, Mπ is zero and this quantity is the one that maximizes profit.

    Key Terms

    • marginal revenue: Marginal revenue is the additional revenue that will be generated by increasing product sales by one unit.
    • Total Revenue: Total revenue is the total receipts of a firm from the sale of any given quantity of a product.
    • Total cost: Total cost (TC) describes the total economic cost of production and is made up of variable costs, which vary according to the quantity of a good produced and include inputs such as labor and raw materials, plus fixed costs, which are independent of the quantity of a good produced and include inputs (capital) that cannot be varied in the short term, such as buildings and machinery.

    Profit and Pricing Objectives

    Some firms decide to set prices to maximize profits for either the short run or the long run. There are several methods to maximizing profits:

    Profit-based Sales Targets

    In launching new products or considering the pricing of current products, managers often start with an idea of the dollar profit they desire and ask what level of sales will be needed to reach it. Target volume (#) is the unit sales quantity needed to meet an earnings goal. Target revenue ($) is the corresponding figure for dollar sales. Increasingly, marketers are expected to generate volumes that meet the target profits of their firm. This will often require them to revise sales targets as prices and costs change.

    The purpose of profit-based sales target metrics is to ensure that marketing and sales objectives mesh with profit targets. In target volume and target revenue calculations, managers go beyond break-even analysis (the point at which a company sells enough to cover its fixed costs) to determine the level of unit sales or revenues needed to cover a firm’s costs and attain its profit targets.

    The Total Cost Method

    To obtain the profit maximizing output quantity, you start by recognizing that profit is equal to total revenue (TR) minus total cost (TC). Given a table of costs and revenues at each quantity, we can either compute equations or plot the data directly on a graph. The profit maximizing output is the one at which this difference reaches its maximum. In, the linear total revenue curve represents the case in which the firm is a perfect competitor in the goods market, and thus cannot set its own selling price. The profit maximizing output level is represented as the one at which total revenue is the height of C and total cost is the height of B; the maximal profit is measured as CB. This output level is also the one at which the total profit curve is at its maximum. If, contrary to what is assumed in the graph, the firm is not a perfect competitor in the output market, the price to sell the product at can be read off the demand curve at the firm’s optimal quantity of output.

    A revenue curve that shows total profit maximization based on total cost and total revenue.

    Total Profit Maximization: This linear total revenue curve represents the case in which the firm is a perfect competitor in the goods market. As a result, it cannot set its own selling price.

    The Marginal Cost Perspective

    An alternative perspective relies on the relationship that, for each unit sold, marginal profit (Mπ) equals marginal revenue (MR) minus marginal cost (MC). Then, if marginal revenue is greater than marginal cost at some level of output, marginal profit is positive and thus a greater quantity should be produced, and if marginal revenue is less than marginal cost, marginal profit is negative and a lesser quantity should be produced. At the output level at which marginal revenue equals marginal cost, marginal profit is zero and this quantity is the one that maximizes profit. Since total profit increases when marginal profit is positive and total profit decreases when marginal profit is negative, it must reach a maximum where marginal profit is zero – or where marginal cost equals marginal revenue – and where lower or higher output levels give lower profit levels.

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