Part 1 of this blog post series expanded on some of TEC’s earlier articles about companies’ need for better pricing management and optimization practices. This series, which focuses on the complexity of pricing and promotions in retailing, was inspired by JDA Software’s recent “edu-nouncement” on leading retailers’ consumer-centric pricing and promotions strategies and Revionics’ recent (and still ongoing) educational series of Web-seminars.

Part 2 of this blog post series analyzed some common retailers’ practices and explained some of the frequently used vernacular. Then the post went into the building blocks of pricing optimization, starting with setting optimal initial (everyday or base) prices.

Part 3 of this blog post series will analyze the two other building blocks of pricing optimization: promotions and markdowns. Then, the article will go into the next generation of pricing optimization according to JDA: “Lifetime Pricing.” Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog post series expanded on some of TEC’s earlier articles about companies’ need for better pricing management and optimization practices. This series, which focuses on the complexity of pricing and promotions in retailing, was inspired by JDA Software’s recent “edu-nouncement” on leading retailers’ consumer-centric pricing and promotion strategies and Revionics’ recent (and still ongoing) educational series of Web-seminars.

To recap Part 1: due to the phenomenon of the “cross-elasticity” of demand, retailers may want to consider whether promoting an item would result in increased sales volume and, if so, whether that increase would represent incremental revenue or merely cannibalize sales of other items. Retailers have to be able to compare items on promotion against the entire department, product category, and subcategory. Read the rest of this entry »

The “Four Ps” of marketing strategy, also known as the “marketing mix,” are basically applicable to all businesses. TEC’s two-part blog post series in 2008 talked about the importance of pricing management in a down economy. Price and promotion in particular are the lubricants in retailing, although the two remaining Ps–product and place, are indisputably important there as well.

In his guest author article in Retail Info Systems (RIS) News, Wayne Usie, senior vice president of retail at JDA Software, remarks that one doesn’t have to go far to see the impact the economy is having on retailers. The evening news is plagued with store closings, while “going out of business signs” and ominously empty “for rent” spaces seem to pop up on every corner. Read the rest of this entry »

In TEC’s previous articles and blog posts about pricing management and optimization vendors like Zilliant, Vendavo, DemandTec, Servigistics or Revionics, the main focus was on finished goods (including spare parts). Whether these final products are sold at retail shelves to consumers or dealt directly between trading partners, their proper pricing is meant to create demand and profitability for the seller. In other words, the idea is to harness science to understand products’ baseline demand, price sensitivity, and the impact of pricing actions based on demand sensing insights.

Recently, however, I had a chance to meet with an interesting pricing optimization startup vendor whose aim is to help upstream manufacturers and suppliers understand how to better translate commodity (e.g., corn, soy, oil, gas, electricity, metals, polypropylene) prices into viable final product mixes. For example, how can a meat packer make better downstream supply chain decisions on its choice of cuts (e.g., a beef carcass as a source material can yield more than one thousand various meat cuts as finished products) and ensure that they are priced best on the retail shelf at the end of a highly perishable supply chain? Read the rest of this entry »