Pricing is one of the four p's of the marketing mix. The other three aspects are product, promotion, and place. It is also a key variable in microeconomic price allocation theory. Price is the only revenue generating element amongst the 4ps,the rest being cost centers. Pricing is the manual or automatic process of applying prices to purchase and sales orders, based on factors such as: a fixed amount, quantity break, promotion or sales campaign, specific vendor quote, price prevailing on entry, shipment or invoice date, combination of multiple orders or lines, and many others. Automated systems require more setup and maintenance but may prevent pricing errors.

Questions involved in pricing

Pricing involves asking questions like:

• How much to charge for a product or service? This question is that a typical starting point for discussions about pricing, however, a better question for a vendor to ask is - How much do customers value the products, services, and other intangibles that the vendor provides.
• What are the pricing objectives?
• Do we use profit maximization pricing?
• How to set the price?: (cost-plus pricing, demand based or value-based pricing, rate of return pricing, or competitor indexing)
• Should there be a single price or multiple pricing?
• Should prices change in various geographical areas, referred to as zone pricing?
• Should there be quantity discounts?
• What prices are competitors charging?
• Do you use a price skimming strategy or a penetration pricing strategy?
• What image do you want the price to convey?
• Do you use psychological pricing?
• How important are customer price sensitivity (e.g. "sticker shock") and elasticity issues?
• Can real-time pricing be used?
• Is price discrimination or yield management appropriate?
• Are there legal restrictions on retail price maintenance, price collusion, or price discrimination?
• Do price points already exist for the product category?
• How flexible can we be in pricing? : The more competitive the industry, the less flexibility we have.
• The price floor is determined by production factors like costs (often only variable costs are taken into account), economies of scale, marginal cost, and degree of operating leverage
• The price ceiling is determined by demand factors like price elasticity and price points
• Are there transfer pricing considerations?
• What is the chance of getting involved in a price war?
• How visible should the price be? - Should the price be neutral? (ie.: not an important differentiating factor), should it be highly visible? (to help promote a low priced economy product, or to reinforce the prestige image of a quality product), or should it be hidden? (so as to allow marketers to generate interest in the product unhindered by price considerations).
• Are there joint product pricing considerations?
• What are the non-price costs of purchasing the product? (eg.: travel time to the store, wait time in the store, disagreeable elements associated with the product purchase - dentist -> pain, fishmarket -> smells)
• What sort of payments should be accepted? (cash, check, credit card, barter) Pricing