Groupon has taken the local deal market by storm, growing quickly to $2B in revenue (depending on how you define “revenue”). The local deals company has also created massive buzz and is now preparing for one of the largest IPOs in history. As a “pricing person”, I get a lot of questions from small business [...]
I try to avoid political commentary, but sometimes I just can’t avoid it. The airline industry has always been a tough place to make money, but since 9/11, terrorism fears, long delays in security, and surging oil prices have really made the market a place with little pricing power and lots of cost exposure. Pricing [...]
I’ve been trying hard not to get into politics, but let’s take a quick detour there and try to hurry back before we cause too much of a ruckus. For a short synopsis on the financial crises, see Scott Adams here. Once house prices started rising, too many people were hooked on the drug. This [...]
Tim Cummins, president of International Association for Contract and Commercial Management, recently wrote a post on his Commitment Matters blog about how courts had thrown out contracts related to software and cell phone contracts. While the court rulings, should they stand, may impact various niches of contract law, we might want to follow Tim’s advice [...]
A French court ruled that Amazon’s free shipping policy violates a law that forbids booksellers from discounting more than 5% off list price. Rather than stopping the practice, Amazon has upped the ante, continuing the policy in the face of a €1,000 per day fine, and soliciting customers to sign a petition in favor of [...]
In a decision that will have profound pricing impact, the Supreme Court overturned a century-old ban on restrictive pricing clauses between manufacturers and distributors or retailers. In an ideologically divided 5-4 decision, the high court ruled that the practice of producers dictating prices to business further down the channel was not longer a definitive violation [...]
The United States Supreme Court has taken on a case involving the legality of minimum pricing agreements. A small retailer in Texas cut prices on womens’ fashion accessories in response to similar discounting by competitors. The manufacturer threatened to cut off supplies to those stores selling below MSRP. The retailers sued, and won, invoking a [...]
It’s been a tough stretch for Big Pharma, which is getting a pricing beating from cheaper generic alternatives. Merck is offering big discounts on AIDS drug Efavirenz in Thailand, as Thailand considers producing generic versions of the patented medicine via Compulsory Licensing. Pfizer announced that it is cutting over 2000 sales jobs in the wake [...]
Oracle agreed to pay a $98.5M fine, resulting from overcharging on government contracts by Oracle’s PeopleSoft subsidiary. (The overcharging took place before Oracle acquired PeopleSoft .) The government is always supposed to get the “best price”, but in some cases, other corporate customers got bigger discounts. By law, the government is entitled to those discounts. [...]
A former vice president of marketing for the U.S. division of Samsung will do jail time and pay a fine after a plea deal in a long-running price-fixing case in the semiconductor industry. While setting prices in a smoky backroom is illegal and wrong, the case may have an unfortunate impact on legitimate pricing activities. [...]
