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Setting Export Prices with a Marketing View

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Setting export prices with a marketing view

Price is the only one of the 4 P 's that produces revenues. Set the right price is fundamental as pricing for the foreign market is more complex than in the home market. Exporter must decide whether its exported product price will be higher, at the same level or lower than in the domestic market. Too often, in fact, companies forget to think about the customers and define prices just looking at the production costs. This behaviour is likely to drive a company to a below-average performance because it does not take into account the customer 's point of view and the company 's strategy.

Marketers, first of all, have to consider price boundaries such as the price floor, the price ceiling and …show more content…

This strategy, called penetration strategy, allows lowering per-unit costs experiencing economies of scale and to push profitability forward. Sony used this strategy when launched its portable CD-player. Japanese companies use this approach to enter a market exploiting high quality for low prices.

When a market is filled, or with a strong competition, a market holding strategy may be applied. In fact, in such a market situation the only way to gain profitability is to be competitive. This mean lower the costs (both fixed and variable) optimising the production process and /or moving the production premises closer to target markets or exploiting the product life cycle. For instance, Peugeot still produces its ‘504 ' in Nigeria with very low cost and a good profitability.

To cope with a global developing economy, and in order to have under-control all the aspects and elements that affect international pricing, companies have to define the correct pricing policy.

For the ethnocentric policy the price hat to be the same around the world. For this reason, importers have to absorb freight and import duties. This approach is very simple because no information on competition is required. With this policy the company cannot maximise its profits neither in each national markets nor globally.

The polycentric policy allows each local subsidiary to set a price that is considered to be the most appropriate for local conditions. Prices are

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