I’m a big fan of automating pricing tasks. Companies spend way too much time on mundane issues like moving pricing information from one system (or spreadsheet) to another, and far too little time really thinking strategically about price and value. A few simple automation steps can free up time and money for those strategic activities, [...]
What’s your plan to close out 2009? For many companies, 2009 has been a tough year. While many people remember the crash of the dot-com bubble, some people seem to have forgotten, and even that crash didn’t impact the broader economy the way the housing and credit market implosion did. So how are you going [...]
For most people, throughout most of human existence, scarcity was paramount.** Now we live in an age of not just abundance, but superabundance. The agricultural revolution created abundance– not by today’s standards– in food. The industrial revolution created abundance in manufactured goods. The information revolution not only created an abundance of communication and information, it [...]
Despite strong demand for technology products by both home and business buyers, competitive pricing is exerting strong downward pressure on profits and stocks. Hardware makers are suffering the most, from storage, to memory, to processors. As this Wall Street Journal article notes (thanks to an alert reader): Pricing issues have been a cloud over tech [...]
Punished by the the popularity of cheap DVDs, video-on-demand, and the Netflix DVD-rental-by-mail service, Blockbuster announced further price cuts on its subscription plans. These plans allow consumers to rent and return videos at stores or by mail. The added ability to rent something immediately in the store, or return to a store, should provide additional [...]
Shares of AMD took a beating last week after the Austin chip maker announced a 4th quarter loss and offered cautious guidance because of an ongoing price war of attrition with Intel. The loss is largely due to charges related to the acquisition of graphics chip maker ATI, but what really rattled shareholders was the [...]
Electronics giant Motorola, the number 2 maker of cellphones after Nokia, announced that it will shed 3,500 jobs in a cost-cutting move after overly aggressive discounts trimmed profits. Motorola reported net income of $624M, off nearly 50% from a year ago. The results have led investors to demand a plan to improve margins, partly by [...]
People are competitive. Companies are competitive. They want to beat each other, they want to “win.” That’s why otherwise smart people often start or join price wars. Price wars transfer money from sellers to buyers. This is not a good thing if you’re a pricing person, or the CFO. AMD and Intel are in a [...]
A vicious price war for large, flat screen televisions has bit into Circuit City’s bottom line. The electronics retailer posted a loss for the past 3 months, sending shares skidding. As usual, the price war for fancy TV’s has removed profit from the industry and put the money back in consumers’ pockets. The message for [...]
