Company using is Colgate-Palmolive

Weekly Marketing Analysis Paper: Pricing Strategies and Pricing Plan

Introduction and Alignment

This is the third of six Weekly Marketing Analysis Papers you will complete in this course. Pricing strategies for products or services usually involve three main ways to increase profits. A business can cut costs, sell more, or find more profit with a better pricing strategy. When costs are already at their lowest and sales are also low, adopting a better pricing strategy is vital to staying viable.

Merely raising prices is not always the answer, especially in a poor economy. Businesses have been lost because they priced themselves out of the marketplace. On the other hand, sometimes businesses leave "money on the table". One strategy does not fit all, so adopting a pricing strategy is a learning curve when studying the needs and behaviors of customers and clients.

Upon completion of this assignment you should be able to:

1. Detect unethical pricing practices in a company.

2. Formulate pricing practices that work within ethical frameworks

Resources

• Textbook: A Framework for Marketing Management
• Website: Khan Academy: http://www.khanacademy.org/

Background Information

There are several major considerations in price setting that are covered in an organization's pricing plan. In determining a price, researching competitors' prices and the price of substitutes provides a starting place. Customers' assessments of unique product qualities will create the top price amount. Setting the price between these two prices is a necessary skill.

Instructions

1. After reading Chapter 11 of the textbook, go to Khan Academy (http://www.khanacademy.org/) and type "demand" to navigate to a video on the fundamentals of price and demand.

2. Using the company you selected in Workshop One, select a product or service from the company's product offering and respond to the following in your weekly marketing analysis paper:

a. Evaluate using clear, insightful critical thinking, the organization's pricing plan on this product.

i. Identify the pricing strategy or strategies that are used.

ii. Compare and contrast the organization's pricing strategy with that of a close competitor. How are they the same? How are they different?

b. Assume you are the product manager for this same product; the close competitor has just dropped their price 20% on their competing product offering. You are now responsible for setting a new price for this product and writing a new formal price plan. Following the six-step Setting the Price model that starts on page 176 of the course textbook, write a formal price plan using clear, insightful critical thinking.

3  Paper requirements:

a. Length: five - six pages

b. Research requirements: 10 research sources. Sources must be credible and from the last five years.

c. Your paper should use proper spelling, grammar, and APA formatting.

4  If appropriate, these sources can be used in subsequent WeeklyMarketing Analysis Papers. Hint: Look ahead at the topics for thisseries of papers.When you conduct your research for this paper; you will likely identify possible research sources for futurepapers.

When you have completed your assignment, save a copy for yourself and submit a copy to your instructor using the Dropbox by the end of the workshop.