Pricing: Strategy and Tactics
Learn how to strategically manage pricing to defend or increase your profitability, even in highly competitive markets.
Too often, managers treat pricing as a tactical problem. By pricing to cover costs, they undermine profit. By pricing for competitive advantage, they undermine value. In fact, pricing products and services is a strategic challenge that requires insight, analysis, and perspective.
This program introduces senior managers and executives responsible for pricing decisions and approvals to the theory and techniques needed to understand strategic pricing and implement it in their own organization. The program will help you use price to achieve strategic objectives, successfully introduce new products to the market, respond to significant price competition, and achieve prices that reflect the true value of your products.
By attending this program, you will:
- Explore the real financial implications of pricing decisions and when it makes sense to compete on price and when it doesn't.
- Learn how to change customers' price perceptions to capture more value and determine which alternatives to price competition are appropriate for your business.
- Use pricing to strategically guide a business to long-term profitability, rather than reacting to solve short-term challenges.
Location
Chicago Booth, Gleacher Center, Chicago, IL
This program is designed for senior managers and executives of companies who analyze, recommend, or approve pricing decisions. It is especially valuable for directors of marketing, finance, sales, and planning and for managing directors and presidents of smaller companies who are introducing new products, facing significant price competition, or failing to achieve prices that reflect the value they deliver.
Sanjay K. Dhar
Sanjay K. Dhar studies strategic marketing management, advanced marketing strategy, brand management, new product development, pricing strategy, promotion strategy, advertising strategy, product placement strategy, retail price advertising strategies, retail management best practices, consumer and retail sales promotions, trade promotions, private labels, category management, loyalty reward programs, EDLP pricing, assortment management, purchase incidence, and brand choice. His research has been selected as a finalist for the 2012 William O’Dell Award, which awards an article published in the Journal of Marketing Research in the last 5 years that has made the most significant long-term contribution to marketing theory, methodology, and/or practice, awarded the 2008 Paul Green Award which recognizes the best article published in the Journal of Marketing Research, the John D. C. Little Award in 1995 for the best paper in marketing published in an INFORMS journal and he was a runner-up for the Davidson Award in 2003 for the best paper published in the Journal of Retailing. Dhar has published articles in the Journal of Political Economy, Marketing Science, the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Retailing, Management Science, Marketing Letters, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, and Pricing Theory and Practice.
In 2010, Veritas Prep listed Dhar as one of 6 “Must Have” professors at Chicago Booth based on student input. In 2006, the Economic Times in India identified Dhar as one of twelve "Indians who have made a global impact on marketing research and thought." He received the 2017 Faculty Excellence Teaching Award voted by Evening and Weekend MBA students, the 2012 Hillel Einhorn Teaching Award voted by executive MBA students in North America, the 2008 Hillel Einhorn Teaching Award voted by executive MBA students in Asia, the McKinsey Award for Teaching Excellence in 2000 awarded once every 2 years, was cited among the outstanding faculty in Business Week's Guide to Best Business Schools (McGraw-Hill, 1997, 1999, and 2001), and in 1994 he was awarded the Emory Williams Teaching Award by students for his outstanding teaching performance. "I stress the importance of learning fundamentals in my classes, which enables my students to address any marketing problem - no matter how complex - because they can apply the principles to dissect the problem."
Dhar received a bachelor's degree in technology (mechanical engineering) with honors from the Indian Institute of Technology of India in 1983. His MBA is from the Indian Institute of Management, India. He also worked in several management positions for Lipton India Limited, a subsidiary of Unilever. He then came to the United States, where he studied at the University of California in Los Angeles. He earned a PhD in management in 1992. He has been a Chicago Booth faculty member since 1992.
Dhar also has extensive industry based executive teaching and consulting experience and regularly advises firm on strategic marketing, pricing and new product development.
In addition to teaching and research, Dhar enjoys working with his two children and taking care of their several pets, as well as his three tropical fish aquariums.
Georg Müller
Georg Müller is a Managing Director at Deloitte where he specializes in helping firms develop and implement profitable growth strategies. He serves clients in manufacturing, automotive, distribution, technology, healthcare, and consumer products. Past work includes transactional assessments to identify near-term margin opportunities, pricing for new product introductions , designing channel incentive programs, creating new revenue models to capture value more efficiently, and building strategies to address competitive entry.
Georg started his career as Assistant Professor at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University where his courses on marketing strategy won teaching awards. Prior to joining Deloitte, Georg served as Vice President of a start-up company specializing in health analytics. The company was acquired by one of the nation’s leading clinical laboratory companies.
Georg is a frequent presenter at industry conferences such as the Professional Pricing Society, the Association of International Product Marketing and Management, and Eye for Retail. He has published articles on pricing, marketing strategy, and economics.
He received his MBA and PhD in Marketing and Statistics from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Programs taught by this instructor include:
Strategic versus Tactical Pricing: Asking the Right Questions
- Why pricing "to cover costs" undermines profit
- Fundamentals of value-based pricing
- Creating value - the use of EVC
- Communicating value and value maps
- Why pricing "to achieve sales goals" wastes profit
- Why pricing "for competitive advantage" undermines value
Costing and Financial Analysis
- Determining the relevant costs for pricing
- Incremental costing versus fully allocated costing
- The importance of contribution margin
- Calculating break-even sales changes
- Analyzing the profitability of price changes
Managing Price Competition
- Mastering the pricing "game" and planning for profitable competition
- Using information strategically
- Managing resources for competitive advantage
- Understanding the legal issues in pricing
Pricing Psychology
- Understanding how customer information processing strategies affect price perceptions and judgments
- Determining effective pricing communication tactics
- Managing customer risk to maximize value
Strategic Pricing Tools and Application
- Determining the product/service economic value
- Creating tiered offerings to drive margin and growth
- Using price analytics to identify opportunities for policy and process change
Setting Profit-Maximizing Prices
- The role of value
- Segmented pricing
- Accounting for price sensitivity factors
- Using price to achieve strategic objectives
- Managing price over the life cycle
Organizational Transformation
- Building a pricing capability
- Road map for transitioning to strategic pricing
- Planning for organizational change
Comprehensive, thought provoking, applicable. An overall excellent experience that provided me with a rigorous basis for making pricing and marketing strategy decisions.
—Mark Caylor, Manager, Commercial Transactions, Boeing Satellite Systems
High value seminar and discussions. Very thought provoking. I am eager to apply it and assist moving my company forward.
—Jeffrey Lillich, CFO, Tempur Pedic Inc.
It was a very beneficial class and we actually used some of the strategies learned over the immediate week this weekend to put together a tiered multi-option unbundled value package for a quick turnaround government quote. The package was sent out on Monday and we secured every line item yesterday due to the presentation of the quote package.
—Chris Norch, President, Denison Industries
Managers who believe that the pricing process is under their control should take this course to understand the potential damage they could be driving to the profit of their companies, and also this course would help them to understand the challenges that are involved as decision maker.
—Francisco Canzoneri, Planning Supervisor, Petroleos de Venezuela
As a CFO of a small/mid-sized company, I found it very useful to listen to and interact with experts in marketing and pricing. Several of the presentations yielded new ideas which should be addressed in my company's strategic discussions.
—Tom Friezen, CFO, Dakota Growers Pasta Co.
Overall, a very good course. Good content coverage and excellent translation of principles to real world situations. The instructors compliment each other well in areas of organization, experience and energy. Each seems very in touch with what is happening in industry and what are the current strategies for effective pricing tactics.
—John Eshleman, Site Manager, SPI Pharma
This program effective tools I plan to take back to the office. The tools reviewed in our session will allow us to be more proactive in establishing our pricing strategy. We will be better prepared to quickly address changes in market conditions.
—Mark Pieroni, Director of Finance, Scientific-Atlanta, Inc.
The class is an absolute requirement for any person who is tasked to be a change agent for their organization's pricing strategy
—Michael Maddie, Finance Manager, Best Buy
The instructors provided excellent insight and real world illustrations of the strategic power of pricing structure and policy in business. Everyone in management will benefit from these principles and techniques
- Charlie H. Rogers, Director of Customer Service, FMC FoodTech Inc.
This was an excellent class that touched on the key strategic points on pricing, profit, and understanding risks and understanding how to promote value of your products and services.
—A.J. White, VROD Assembly Process Lead, Harley Davidson Motor Company
Very focused, practical. It gives the right basic framework to think about pricing as a major profitability driver.
—Antonio Ferreira Managing Director, Johnson & Johnson Produtos Proffissionais - Brasil