Monthly Archives: January 2007

Automated Price Protection

Many stores offer 30 day price protection. If you buy something and the store lowers the price within 30 days, they’ll refund the difference. The hard part was knowing when they had lowered the price. An alert reader sent a … Read More

Pricing Pressure Pounds AMD Shares

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 … Read More

Webinar on Effective Pricing and Value Capture

On Wednesday, January 24, I’ll be presenting a webinar on Effective Pricing and Value Capture at 12 noon EST. If you don’t make it live, we will make a recording available later (we’ll post a link here). Effective Pricing and … Read More

Motorola Lays Off 3,500, Cites Pricing Problems

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 … Read More

Why Price Wars Are a Bad Idea

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 … Read More

Index Pricing

Do you suffer from wild cost fluctuations due to changing commodity prices, but find it hard to pass rising costs through to customers? One approach is to create a separate line item for the commodity, tied to the actual price … Read More

Pricing for “No”

Many people price to hear “yes.” They do not want to encounter price objections, so it’s simply easier to set a low price. This is a dangerous practice for any business, but it’s particularly acute for small businesses with little … Read More