Archive for 2013
Top 6 – October 2013
“I know he’s a good general, but is he lucky?” Napoleon Bonaparte Failures happen. The question is will you learn the right lessons from them and get back in the game? So, when is price discrimination effective? It is effective whenever it works in practice. Shape the future for your best outcome or evaluate the…
Read MoreIPO Announcement Sets Wall Street A-Twitter
Twitter is going public. Will the IPO properly value the company and reward investors? Will profits flow?
Read MoreRedbox Experiments with Price Promotions. Shareholders Recoil from Outerwall.
Outerwall Inc. the owner of the Redbox downgraded their performance guidance tipping off a 13% decline in market capitalization. Did investors overreact? And what caused the poor performance in the first place?
Read MoreWhen is Price Discrimination Effective?
“Discrimination” is a charged and highly sensitive word in the English language, but is it really that bad when it comes to pricing?
Read MoreValue-Based Pricing 101
Despite abundance of available and accessible literature, value-based pricing (VBP) as a concept remains mystified. The key reason is the difficulty of implementation. This article’s aim is to provide the reader a concise review of the ‘do’s and ‘don’t’s of VBP.
Read MoreTop 6 – September 2013
“You can’t ‘manage’ a crowd – or a community – through transactional exchanges or economic incentives. You need something stronger: shared purpose.” Nilofer Merchant, “When TED Lost Control of Its Crowd”, HBR, April 2013, p 82. Game-changing entrepreneurs co-create a future with that mutually benefits the co-creators. Game-changing entrepreneurs set goals based upon the means…
Read MoreWho Should Control Pricing? Sales, Marketing, or Finance?
Who should oversee pricing decisions? Marketing? Sales? Finance? Research by Homburg, Jensen, and Hahn showed it was none of them, all of them, and it depends.
Read MoreThe Taste of Crow: Facebook’s Incredible Profitability Surge
Like many marketing professionals, I was highly skeptical when Facebook did its Initial Public Offering about a year ago. My feeling was that Facebook had no clear-cut business model that would lead to sustainable profits and earnings. How wrong one can be!
Read MoreDiscount the Parts or the Whole?
When selling things that go together, should the company offer discounts on the individual parts or the whole shebang? Sourav Ray, Charles A. Wood, and Paul R. Messinger examined these questions across 650,000 daily price listings and through customer and manager surveys in a recent Journal of Marketing article. Their results have broad price-management implications.
Read MoreTop 6 – August 2013
Which of the following is most critical for a successful entrepreneur to have? An Idea Money Employees Customers Which one? Customers, you goof. Who do you serve? What do they need? Why are you the best person to serve them? How will they learn this? “The difference between an idea and a profit-making business is…
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