Practical Pricing for Results , livre ebook

Thorogood Publishing - Ian Ruskin-Brown

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

157 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

This book provides entrepreneurs with a practical guide on how to set and manage the pricing of both the products and services that they offer. It outlines the process of deriving a pricing strategy first, and then monitoring the profit implications of any pricing decisions made.

Sujets

Gestion et management

Strategic management

Informations

Publié par	Thorogood Publishing
Date de parution	01 septembre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781854188632
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Cov
Cov
First published in eBook format 2014 Thorogood Publishing Ltd 10-12 Rivington Street London EC2A 3DU Telephone: 020 7749 4748 Email: info@thorogoodpublishing.co.uk Web: www.thorogoodpublishing.co.uk
© Ian Ruskin-Brown 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser.
No responsibility for loss occasioned to any person acting or refraining from action as a result of any material in this publication can be accepted by the author or publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The Author
Ian Ruskin Brown is both an academic, a practising and incurable businessman, consultant and trainer.
Over the last 36 years Ian has gained a wide range and depth of experience in marketing and in management.
He is a full member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, the Business Graduates Association of MBA’s, a fellow of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management, a full member and Diplomate of the Market Research Society, and is a member of the British Institute of Management. He saw active service as an officer and sometime helicopter pilot in HM Royal Marines Commandos, before becoming a practising, if slightly unconvinced civilian in late 1966.
Ian’s business career has a strong bias towards marketing management in the operational field and planning functions – working for such firms as: Lyons & Co., Reed Paper Group, Trebor Sharpes, Esso Petroleum and Goodyear Tyre & Rubber, to name but a few.
Following a major motor accident in 1973, his career has oriented toward the academic and consultancy, working as a Senior Lecturer at the SWRMC ( now the University of the South West ) and with visiting lectureships at the universities of Bath, Bristol, Oran (Algeria) and the NIHE Limerick (Eire). Ian was a long time member (13 years) of the Faculty of the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s (CIM), training arm.
For several years Ian was the initial speaker on the FCO Management Training Programme for those who are due to take posts as UK Commercial Attachés in UK embassies overseas.
Until recently he was a member of the IBM International Business School, faculties of ST micro-electronics based in Aix-en-Provence. Currently he is a member of Faculties of Management Centre Europe (MCE) in Brussels, Singapore Institute of Management (International) and PKMH of Malaysia. He recently worked worldwide for Nokia Networks, and is currently working for Texas Instruments, Securitas, Amadeus, Alfa Laval and ChevronTexaco Oil. For these and several other bodies, Ian runs open and ‘client specific’ courses.
Before taking up founding directorships in several very successful companies, MSS Market Research Ltd and Mercator Ltd (MR Software), Ian worked as an independent, freelance consultant, being involved in consumer, industrial, Government policy and tourism projects, often acting in the dual capacity of consultant/project leader.
In early 1983, Ian set up his own independent marketing consultancy, now operating as Ruskin Brown Associates , for training in marketing and sales skills, and for the provision of both consultancy and market research services.
These activities continually bring him into contact with a wide range of marketing situations at home and abroad. All of which experience has gone into his two previous books entitled Mastering Marketing , 2nd edition and Marketing your Service Business both published by Thorogood Publishing.
What qualifies the author?
The 13 years that Ian ran his marketing research business, and the concurrent training he conducted at the Chartered Institute of Marketing brought him into contact with a large number and a wide range of sales and marketing personnel and SME managers throughout the developed world. This experience, particularly when presenting research or financial data, revealed that far too many non-accountant decision makers in business were, by and large, lacking ‘pricing savvy’.
As a result of this insight he: Teamed up with such people as Roy Hill MBE, Richard Collier, et al. Read widely the works of such luminaries as Thomas Nagle, Reed Holden, John Harris, John Winkler et al. (See Recommended reading list, Appendix 3.) Designed, launched and successfully ran the training course ‘Marketing Pricing’ at the CIM from 1992 to 1998, and from 1997 to 2001 via Frost & Sullivan. Designed and now runs a similar course at Management Centre Europe ( the Brussels arm of the American Marketing Association ). Currently Ian is a member of the Mid-East Faculty of International Industrial Research (IIRme.) which is the largest conference provider in the world. Via them he trains throughout the Mid-East. Specializing in pricing, the marketing businesses in the service sector, marketing research, and professional interpersonal skills.
Privately and via the above, over the subsequent years Ian has also delivered pricing training with such firms as Caltex (now ChevronTexaco), EuroRail, CMC of Dubai, PKMH of Kuala Lumpur, Philips International and Singapore Institute of Management International (SIMI). He has run successful pricing training and consultancy projects in the USA, throughout Europe, South Africa, Malaysia, China and the Mid-East.
Prologue
The recorded history of the world is the history of Trade, and the history of Trade is the history of Price!
It is said that the earliest occurrence of writing as we know it today i , was the Cuneiform Script that originated in Mesopotamia (mainly modern Iraq). This was done on clay tablets of which many exist to this day, and it seems that these piles of clay tablets are not recording the passage or enforcement of laws, or the immortalization of folk tales, songs nor romantic poetry, they are but instruments of commercial business, books of accounts, records of purchases and sales, invoices and the like ii . Price features largely in all these records. The main if not their only method of setting price in ancient Mesopotamia was ‘cost plus’ of which we will have more to say in Chapters 3 and 4.
The conduct of trade (mercantilism) was a major engine for the ‘cradle of western civilization’ the Mid-East and the Mediterranean. The mainstays were the staples of wine, sandalwood, grain, olive oil etc. from producer to consumer countries. In almost every case the principle was to acquire the produce where it was in plentiful supply and moving it to where it was in short supply and thus commanded a higher price. Specifically in the Eastern Mediterranean there was also some nascent marketing, such as the production and trade in more high value products such as paper from Biblos iii and the ‘royal purple’ dye iv from Crete that gave the ancient nobility their distinctive robes. Both of these ‘products’ had the advantage of low volume and high market value.
Countries and peoples have gone to war to protect their trade or take it from others. A major ulterior motive of the Crusades is said to be the control of the end of the ‘silk road’ which was bringing not only silk to the Mid-East and Europe but also spices, dyes, gunpowder technology and China pottery (nearly all of which was also comparatively low volume but high value) .
These quasi monopoly/oligopoly sources of supply commanded such high prices for their goods that there was a strong motivation for their customer markets to find alternative routes to the producers. The Arabs / Ceylonese and their innovation of the ‘Lateen Sail’ were the first to break the monopoly of the silk road, AND in addition they brought to the west the spices from what we now call Indonesia. In their turn the Portuguese and the Spanish tried, each in their own way, to bypass the Moors to get to the ‘Indies’ direct.
Eventually the Dutch and the British got there and promptly fought a 40 year-long war trying to gain control of the Moluccas, the then only known source of nutmeg, which, at the time commanded a price in Europe of circa seven times its own weight in gold.
It was around this time that the Dutch became, if not the largest, then perhaps the smartest international trading nation in Europe. If any people should know about the law of supply and demand they should. And yet even some of the most experienced and wise of them got it wrong from time to time - once catastrophically.
During the 16th century, when Spain was fighting to keep the Low Countries inside the Spanish empire, the grand old Duke of Palma laid siege to Antwerp, not because he wanted to but because Philip told him to. Up to that time the Duke had never lost a battle in his long and venerable career as a soldier but he could not see how he could successfully lay siege to a city nearly completely surrounded by water.
He need not have worried, the City Fathers of Antwerp gave him an almost bloodless victory, not because they wanted to, but because they had forgotten some of the basics of trade upon which their very city was built.
As the city was being invested, the City Fathers were concerned that none should profit from the siege and that the rich would not exploit the poor so they set limits on the price of food.
Result: because the food producers in the adjacent countryside, and the merchants in the local towns saw no profit in taking the risk of being caught and punished by the Duke’s besieging men, and that they could sell their produce elsewhere, they stopped supplying Antwerp at all.
The good citizens of the city saw no reason to conserve consum