Elementos para a construção da autonomia do estudante em EAD

The mission of Swedish furniture retailer Ikea is to improve everyday life by ‘offering a wide range of well-designed, functional home-furnishings products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them’.²¹ With 300 stores in 36 countries and £17 billion in annual turnover, Ikea sells most of its stylish goods packed flat for customers to assemble at home – saving space and money at the same time.

Although low prices are a high priority, the company’s marketing plans also take into account sustainability and ecological issues.

Ikea’s marketers carefully research customer needs, examine value perceptions and check competitive pricing to understand the current market situation. As they design a new product, they set a target price lower than rivals, estimate costs and plan features and specifications appropriate for the target price. They take into consideration sustain-ability as they consult with suppliers and come to agreement on costs and materials before they design the product, have it manufactured and ship it to stores.

As both manufacturer and distributor, Ikea can set its own retail prices with an eye towards profitability. However, its marketers must also follow legal and regula-tory guidelines, which can affect costs and pricing from market to market. When Ikea opened its Dublin store, some of its prices were higher than in its UK stores, because of the Republic’s higher VAT rate. Following local planning rules, the Dublin store also had to charge extra for using its car park during peak evening traffic periods, the only Ikea store in Europe to impose such fees.

Ikea’s marketers are always looking for ways to improve internal efficiency, going so far as to switch fonts in the printed catalogue to save money. During the economic crisis, they scaled back expansion plans and lowered sales forecasts as consumers slowed their buying in most of the markets where Ikea has stores. What’s ahead for Ikea’s pricing plans as the global economy recovers?²²

Case questions

1. is ikea using value-based pricing or cost-based pricing? How do you know? What are the implications for its marketing plans?

2. Which specific external and internal factors seem to be especially important influences on ikea’s pricing? Why must its marketers pay close attention to these particular influences when they plan for pricing?

155 Chapter 7: Planning for pricing

APPLY YOUR kNOWLEDGE

Choose a particular business product (such as a tractor or specialised software) and research the marketer’s approach to pricing. Then write up your ideas or give an oral presentation to the class.

• What benefits does this product appear to offer to business customers?

• What initial and ongoing costs would business customers perceive in connection with buying and maintaining this product?

• If the product is new, what pricing approach is the company using to launch it?

Why is this approach appropriate for the product?

• How does the price reflect the product’s positioning and other marketing-mix decisions?

• How does the price of one competing or substitute product appear to reflect that product’s value (from the customer’s perspective)? If you were a customer, would you place a higher value on this competing product than on the product you have been researching? Why?

BUILD YOUR OWN MARkETING PLAN

Continue developing your marketing plan by making pricing decisions about a new or existing product. What pricing objectives will you set for this product? If the product is new, will you use market-skimming pricing or market-penetration pricing – and why?

Which external influences are most important to the pricing of this product? How do internal influences affect your pricing decision for this product? What price will you set for this one product and in what situations would you consider adapting the price?

Would auction pricing or negotiated pricing be appropriate? Consider how these pricing decisions fit in with earlier marketing decisions and with the objectives you’ve set, then document them in your marketing plan.

156 Essential Guide to Marketing Planning

ENDNOTES

1. Quoted in Steve Hawkes, ‘Block party’, The Sun, 18 August 2009, www.thesun.co.uk.

2. ‘Strong demand builds Lego sales’, BBC News, 17 August 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/busi-ness/8205974.stm; Steve Hawkes, ‘Block party’, The Sun, 18 August 2009, www.thesun.co.uk;

Nelson D. Schwartz, ‘Beyond the blocks’, New York Times, 6 September 2009, pp. BU-1, BU-6;

Adam Hartley, ‘Official Lego iPhone photo app launches’, TechRadar.com, 31 December 2009, www.techradar.com.

3. Chris Nuttall and David Gelles, ‘Social game groups scrap over virtual spoils’, Financial Times, 29 June 2009, www.ft.com; Chris Nuttall, ‘Social gaming platforms closer to cashing in’, Financial Times Techblog, 24 June 2009, www.blogs.ft.com/

techblog; Alex Farber, ‘Nokia Ovi app store reaches 10m downloads’, New Media Age, 4 September 2009, www.nma.co.uk; Rupert Neate,

‘Microsoft, Nokia, Orange and O2 challenge Apple’s ‘App Store’’, Telegraph, 16 February 2009, www.telegraph.co.uk/finance.

4. This section draws on concepts in Thomas T.

Nagle and John E. Hogan, The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing, 4th edn (Upper Saddle River, NJ:

Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006).

5. Mary Portas, ‘Shop! Mary Portas visits Aldi’, Telegraph, 23 July 2009, www.telegraph.co.uk/

foodanddrink; Gemma Soames, ‘The rise of the Aldirati’, Sunday Times, 26 April 2009, http://

women.timesonline.co.uk; James Thompson,

‘Credit crisis helps Aldi sales head for £2bn’, The Independent, 7 November 2008, www.independ-ent.co.uk; Suzanne Campbell, ‘How Aldi changed the way we shop’, Independent Digital, 27 August 2009, www.independent.ie/lifestyle/food-drink;

Cecilie Rohwedder and David Kesmodel, ‘Aldi looks to US for growth’, Wall Street Journal, 13 January 2009, p. B1.

6. Michael Malakata, ‘Nokia launches low-cost handsets in Africa’, ComputerWorld Kenya, 10 April 2008, http://www.computerworld.co.ke/

articles/2008/04/10/nokia-launches-low-cost-handsets-africa.

7. Catherine Boyle, ‘S&N lifted profit but we wouldn’t pay £7.6bn now, says Heineken’, Times Online, 27 August 2009, http://business.timeson-line.co.uk.

8. C.K. Prahalad, ‘In volatile times, agility rules’, BusinessWeek, 21 September 2009, p. 80.

9. Quoted in Alexandra Steigrad, ‘Tiffany maintains outlook for year despite fall in net’, WWD, 1 June 2009, p. 13.

10. Quoted in Brian Burnsed, ‘Where discounting can be dangerous’, BusinessWeek, 23 July 2009, p. 49.

Other sources: Vanessa O’Connell and Amelie Baubeau, ‘Corporate news: Tiffany struggles, sees signs of hope’, Wall Street Journal, 29 August 2009, p. B5; Rachel Dodes, ‘Corporate news: Tiffany unit shut down as jeweler struggles’, Wall Street Journal, 11 March 2009, p. B3; Kumar Alagappan, ‘Gem Diamonds signs supply deal with Tiffany unit’, Reuters, 22 December 2009, www.reuters.com 11. This section draws on concepts in Thomas T.

Nagle and John E. Hogan, The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing, 4th edn (Upper Saddle River, NJ:

Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006).

12. Daniel J. Howard and Roger A. Kerin,

‘Broadening the scope of reference price advertis-ing research’, Journal of Marketadvertis-ing, October 2006, pp. 185–204; Wayne D. Hoyer and Deborah J.

MacInnis, Consumer Behaviour, 5th edn (Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage, 2010), p. 261.

13. Quoted in ‘Film and TV stars back ‘pay for downloads’ campaign’, Telegraph, 7 September 2009,

157 Chapter 7: Planning for pricing

dio; also: Mark Sweney, ‘Anti-piracy campaign aims to win over Generation Y-pay of internet users’, Guardian, 7 September 2009, www.guard-ian.co.uk/technology; Mark Sweney, ‘Campaign against film piracy tells moviegoers how precious they are’, Guardian, 2 April 2009, www.guard-ian.co.uk/media; Harry Wallop, ‘DVD sales fall for first time’, Telegraph, 20 June 2009, www.tel-egraph.co.uk/technology.

14. ‘Microsoft slash £100 off Xbox 360 in console price war’, Daily Mail, 28 August 2009, www.dailymail.

co.uk/sciencetech; Nic Fildes, ‘Orange dongle deal kickstarts mobile broadband price war’, Times Online, 5 August 2009, http://business.

timesonline.co.uk; ‘Aldi joins price wars with raft of 99p products’, Retail Week, 24 April 2009, www.

retail-week.com.

15. Quoted in Oliver Smith, ‘Ryanair scraps services from Robin Hood Airport’, Telegraph, 26 August 2009, www.telegraph.co.uk/travel; also: David Robertson and Robert Lindsay, ‘Ryanair and easyJet spark airport price war’, The Times, 18 August 2009, http://business.timesonline.co.uk.

16. ‘In praise of ... London’s congestion charge’, The Guardian, 7 August 2008, www.guardian.co.uk;

Daniel Gross, ‘What’s the toll? It depends on the time of day’, New York Times, 11 February 2007, sec. 3, p. 7.

17. Shane Richmond, ‘Apple event: everything we expected and less’, Telegraph, 9 September 2009, http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology; Yukari Iwatani Kane, ‘Live-blogging Apple’s iPod event’, Wall Street Journal, 9 September 2009, http://

blogs.wsj.com/digits.

18. Gail Edmondson, ‘Classy cars’, BusinessWeek, 24 March 2003, pp. 62–6.

19. Chris Rivers ‘If airlines are in trouble, why are planes so full?’, McLeans, 13 August 2009, http://

www2.macleans.ca/2009/08/13/if-airlines-are-in-trouble-why-are-planes-so-full.

20. Chris Wilson, ‘Fictional biscuit panda Vinnie raises cash for Crimestoppers’, The Mirror, 3 August 2009, www.mirror.co.uk/news.

21. Ikea, Our Business Idea, www.ikea.com/ms/

en_GB/about_ikea/the_ikea_way/our_business_

idea/index.html.

22. Kate Watson-Smyth, ‘Ikea: Flat pack and fabu-lous’, The Independent, 14 October 2009, www.

independent.co.uk; Simon Garfield, ‘Verdana:

Ikea’s flat-pack font’, Guardian, 2 September 2009, www.guardian.co.uk; ‘Belfast Ikea has an edge on price over Dublin store’, Belfast Telegraph, 23 July 2009, www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk; Peter Ranscombe, ‘Ikea axes more jobs as slump in housing market takes toll’, Scotsman, 8 July 2009, http://business.scotsman.com/consumerspend-ing/Ikea; ‘Ikea opens first store in Republic of Ireland’, Retail Week, 28 July 2009, www.

retail-week.com; ‘Swedish home furnisher finds British market its weakest link’, Sunday Business, 3 January 2007, www.thebusinessonline.com;

Lisa Margonelli, ‘How Ikea designs its sexy price tags’, Business 2.0, October 2002, pp. 106–12; Tom Molloy, ‘Shoppers here pay top dollar for IKEA icon’, Independent, 10 September 2009, www.inde-pendent.ie; ‘IKEA finally opens Dublin store’, RTE Business, 27 July 2009, www.ret.ie/busi-ness/2009/0727/ikea.html.

Comprehension outcomes

After studying this chapter, you will be able to:

• Explain the roles of the value chain, marketing channels and logistics

• Describe the various channel levels and intermediaries

• Contrast exclusive, selective and intensive distribution

• Understand the balance between logistics costs and customer services

Application outcomes

After studying this chapter, you will be able to:

• Analyse the value chain for a good or service

• Decide on the number of channel levels and members

• Analyse and plan for logistics