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In a current article, Wirtschaftswoche examines the pricing of companies that are perceived by consumers in a survey as Germany's cheapest service providers. Among those interviewed was pricing expert Prof. Riekhof, who has specific strategic recommendations for companies.

Wirtschaftswoche on Germany’s Price Favorites 2024: Pricing Expert Riekhof Recommends More Price Flexibility

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Which service providers from various areas of life offer the cheapest prices? For the second time, people were asked this by the analysis and consulting company ServiceValue and WirtschaftsWoche, a total of 213,000 people. The leaders in a ranking of “Germany’s Price Favorites 2024” according to the evaluation are the drugstore chain dm, closely followed by the discount chain Lidl.

In their current article “Germany’s Price Favorites 2024 “Cheap can anyone”: What really makes traders customer favorites” (06.02.2024), Wirtschaftswoche asks what makes these companies so popular in terms of pricing and what other companies can learn from them in this regard.

Pricing specialist Hans-Christian Riekhof advises companies to have more price flexibility

Interviewed by Wirtschaftswoche, Professor Hans-Christian Riekhof, expert for strategic pricing, points to the factor of price flexibility. Companies should learn to act much less generally when adjusting prices. Top performer dm provides a good example of differentiated pricing, explains the pricing specialist, who has developed and conducted numerous pricing studies.

The drugstore chain dm announced in 2019 that it would control its own prices for each store individually from now on, depending on its location and the competition on site. This means that if there is competition nearby, dm has the cheapest prices – in regions with less direct competition, the prices are then also gladly higher. The drugstore chain, according to Riekhof, takes advantage of the fact that consumers’ objective knowledge of prices is much lower than is usually assumed.

Although such pricing practiced by dm requires expensive resources such as personnel and IT, which smaller companies do not necessarily have at their disposal, it is also worthwhile for these companies to pursue more intensive pricing policy within their means, according to the pricing strategist in Wirtschaftswoche.

Read the full article of Wirtschaftswoche, in which he provides further detailed recommendations, under the following link:
https://www.wiwo.de/unternehmen/handel/deutschlands-preisfavoriten-2024-billig-kann-jeder-was-haendler-wirklich-zu-kundenlieblingen-macht/29627844.html

Learn more about the pricing studies:
https://www.unicconsult.com/publikationen/forschungsberichte/

 

Regionale Einheitspreise sind in der Regel suboptimal. Zunehmend werden daher in vielen Branchen Preise systematisch nach regionalen Kriterien differenziert. In einer (noch unveröffentlichten) Studie untersuchten wir, wie das in der Praxis gehen kann. Hier verraten wir die ersten Ergebnisse, die durchaus überraschen.

Pricing-Newsletter No. 54 (2021): How does regional price differentiation work in practice?

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Regionale Einheitspreise sind in der Regel suboptimal. Zunehmend werden daher in vielen Branchen Preise systematisch nach regionalen Kriterien differenziert. In einer (noch unveröffentlichten) Studie untersuchten wir, wie das in der Praxis gehen kann. Hier verraten wir die ersten Ergebnisse, die durchaus überraschen.

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