O pensamento de Paulo Freire na pedagogia da autonomia

External influences

The five major external influences on pricing are: (1) customers; (2) market and demand;

(3) competition; (4) channel members; and (5) legal, regulatory and ethical considerations.

Customers

Not all customers can or want to compare prices; not all customers are interested in buying the lowest-priced alternative. Research shows that consumers will accept a price if it is within what they consider an acceptable range for that good or service.¹² Customers may decide against buying a product that is priced unusually low because they suspect poor quality yet be willing to spend more if a product appears to offer value-added benefits, such as a prestige brand or special service. If your product is par-ticularly innovative or meets unspoken customer needs, you may have to go against long-established traditions of pricing and service levels.

Business buyers in particular may feel pressure to acquire raw materials, components or services at the lowest possible prices, which in turn affects their suppliers’ pricing strategies. Some business buyers and consumers constantly switch brands or suppliers in search of bargains, especially now that they can quickly and easily compare prices online. Your challenge as a marketer is to communicate your product’s benefits so cus-tomers recognise the differentiation and perceive the value in relation to the price.

The UK movie industry is using a multimedia campaign to convince consumers to pay for the real thing rather than pirating or illegally downloading movies and programmes.

Market and demand

You also need to research the demand for your product in the target market – how many units are likely to be sold at different prices – and the effect of price sensitivity, or the elasticity of demand. When your research reveals elastic demand, a small percent-age change in price will usually produce a large change in quantity demanded. If your research reveals inelastic demand, a small percentage change in price will usually pro-duce a small percentage change in quantity demanded (see Table 7.2). Keep demand in mind as you prepare your marketing plan, because pricing decisions will significantly affect your ability to achieve sales and market share objectives.

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Table 7.2 pricing and elasticity of demand

Pricing decision Inelastic demand Elastic demand

small decrease small increase in demand Larger increase in demand

small increase small decrease in demand Larger decrease in demand

Note that you can actually maintain or increase revenues by raising the price when demand is inelastic or by cutting the price when demand is elastic. Still, if you price a product excessively high, you risk reducing demand; price it too low and you may spark strong demand that you cannot profitably satisfy. Yet it can be difficult to research the exact elasticity of demand for a particular product, even though you can conduct pricing experiments and analyse sales history to get data for estimating the elasticity of demand. Remember that elasticity of demand can vary widely from one segment to another and one market to another.

Another consideration for marketers who target customers in other countries is the effect of currency fluctuations in foreign-exchange markets. Multinational corporations such as and Procter & Gamble must think about the effect of foreign-exchange

rates when they import or export and buy from suppliers in other regions. Currency MARkETING IN PRACTICE: pirATE Or pAY?

piracy is a major issue for the uK film studios and retailers, which lose millions of pounds every year to unauthorised dVd duplication and illegal movie downloads and sharing. in fact, dVd sales are falling as an estimated 7 million consumers illegally download enter-tainment content every year without paying. in one recent survey, three-quarters of the consumers who responded agreed with the idea of paying for cinema tickets and dVd rentals – yet fewer than half of the respondents thought they should pay for entertain-ment when downloaded or viewed online. The challenge for the industry has therefore been to discourage pirating and encourage paying.

in the past, hard-edged anti-piracy campaigns focused on the criminal aspect and warned of prosecution and imprisonment. now the industry Trust for ip [intellectual property] Awareness, supported by members such as the uK Film council, cineworld, HmV, Odeon and Granada Ventures, is adopting an attitude of gratitude, encourag-ing consumers to pay because the revenue supports their favourite actors, movies and programmes. With the theme ‘You make the movies’, the campaign emphasises the posi-tive benefits. One advert thanked viewers for paying, saying: ‘Your cinema ticket helps support the film industry in the uK. Thank you.’ As the campaign began, Actor matt di Angelo, of the television programme Hustle, was quoted as saying that consumers ‘need to realise that it’s only by buying official dVds, downloads and cinema tickets that we can enjoy the TV dramas and blockbuster films that we watch on a regular basis’.¹³ Will this campaign reduce instances of piracy and illegal downloads?

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fluctuations – especially sudden or exchange changes – can push profit margins up or down, depending on the foreign-exchange situation and the prices set in each country.

Competition

Whether the product is confectionery or cars, competition exerts a strong influence on pricing decisions. Customers look at the costs and benefits of competing products when thinking about value, so be aware of what competitors are charging. However, it’s risky to imitate another organisation’s pricing simply for competitive reasons, because your organ-isation probably has very different costs, objectives and resources from those of your rival.

Should you become involved in a price war, your profit margins and prices will fall lower and lower. Another risk is that your product could face price competition from products that meet customers’ needs in different ways, as when travellers can choose between air travel and train travel. In the planning process, therefore, you should con-sider any substitutes your customers might choose to meet their needs and how these choices could affect your pricing decisions. In addition, if customers become accus-tomed to waiting for price wars before they buy, you may have difficulty selling at what you previously considered to be normal pricing levels.

Price wars have broken out in many industries as competitors fight for customers and revenue.

Marketing­in­practice: Price wars

For the past decade, sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have become involved in periodic price wars as they cut prices on their video-game consoles to acquire new buyers and increase market share, particularly during the pre-christmas buying season. although steep price cuts mean lower per-unit revenue, these companies also gain from ongoing sales of games and accessories. as a result, the console marketers are willing to battle for customers during a short-term price war because they anticipate higher overall rev-enue in the long run.

Price wars often break out in the supermarket industry, where Tesco, aldi and other competitors cut prices on selected items to bring shoppers into their stores or to defend market share when a rival store opens nearby. Mobile broadband marketers have used price wars to appeal to specific customer segments and increase revenue from non-voice services. During the recent financial crisis, many new car dealers survived by engaging in price wars. The objective was to attract buyers who otherwise might have purchased used cars or would not have bought any cars until the economic climate improved. Once economic conditions improved and new models were introduced, the dealers took less aggressive pricing measures.¹⁴

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