Title: Empirical Study – Pricing Processes in Entrepreneurial Practice
Authors: Hans-Christian Riekhof, Frederik Wurr (2013)
Objective of the study
It still seems that the realization has not yet been established in practice that pricing is one of the most important profit drivers in the company. This is the result of our empirical pricing study from 2009 (Riekhof/Lohaus 2009); the new edition of this study (Riekhof/Wurr 2012) presented here confirms this thesis again very impressively. The focus of our empirical pricing research is the pricing processes, i.e. the internal company processes with which prices are worked out, planned, approved, implemented and later evaluated and controlled in the short, medium and long term. To ensure the comparability of the two studies, the four following essential process elements of pricing were retained as an analysis framework and guide for the survey:
1. Research: Price strategies and price decisions presuppose that corresponding insights about customers, market and competition – in addition to information about internal cost structures – are available. Under the heading Research, all price-related sub-processes of a company are summarized that form the information basis for a long-term price strategy.
2. Strategy: This includes all sub-processes that concern the development and formulation of a long-term price strategy. The price strategy bridges the gap between the value of one’s own product from the customer’s perspective and the demanded equivalent value.
3. Implementation: The organizational regulations, planning processes, leadership and incentive systems that concern the implementation of a defined price strategy are described with this term.
4. Controlling: The circle closes with the processes of price controlling. This is about measuring and making controllable the goals derived from the strategy and their implementation successes – true to the motto “What gets measured gets done”
Wherever possible, we have compared the data from the 2009 study with the newly collected data from 2012. This booklet presents a summary of the most important results of the study.
