Transfer Pricing--Market-Based vs. Cost-Based

Owens & Minor is a distributor of surgical and medical supplies to hospitals and other health care facilities. Due to changing demand from customers, the company is facing increased operating costs, which has resulted in lower profit margins and even losses. In 1993, O&M recorded an $18 million profit, which was reduced to a loss of $11 million in 1995. The entire industry is experiencing similar difficulties. In an effort to resume profitability, O&M is evaluating alternatives to “cost-plus pricing”. Cost-plus pricing does not reflect the true cost of the services provided by O&M. Customers are demanding more of O&M while

For instance, there are generic principles of pricing of desired net income, competitive position, and market structure. According to (Cleverly, Song, & Cleverly, 2011), every business must generate enough revenue through its sales of products and services to sustain its operations and provide for the replacement of its physical assets as well as provide a return to its investors. Partners Healthcare System and among other organizations must recognize levels of pricing, so inadequate pricing doesn’t accumulate to lead to business disaster.

Prices of the different products and services of the organization should be market specific. The economic capability and disposable income of clients should be put into consideration in setting prices for the products and services offered by the organization. By matching prices with the economic capability of a people, it would be much easier to for customers to access the products and services without straining or having to compromise and going for other products of lower quality (Donna, 2012).

Therefore, each division should be autonomous in its decision making. This, however, is not the case with our company. As a matter of fact, the corporate office is influencing and forcing divisions to make the buy and sell decisions from each other at the instructed price of 1.25 times of full production costs. To be a true profit center, the divisions should have the authority to determine and negotiate prices of their products either based on market or through internal resources to ensure profitability. In addition, to be able to ensure operational excellence, managing the costs such as production cost, administrative and selling overheads, should be a priority.

Your company’s solution should follow and be judged by the following criteria. Accurate Profitability, by allocating costs more precisely you will be able to trace and record each customer’s profits and losses. Future Potential of Customers, with a more accurate method of allocating costs and profitability your company will have a greater understanding when making decisions on the future potential of each

Pricing is important when marketing a product. The determining factor for the pricing is the material, time to make, amount spent on marketing and promotion of the product. The goal in providing such a product that is moderately

Pricing is a pertinent issue in procurement and acquisition in organizations. Consumers buying the commodities of an entity should get clarity on pricing related issues. There is uncertainty in Pro

* Minimum Transfer price = Outlay cost + opportunity cost to the company as a whole

In terms of which to use for Polysar Limited’s Rubber Segment, setting prices at cost hereby benefits the EROW center, whereas using market price would benefit the NASA segment. This is because then NASA is recording revenue for the units transferred, whereas EROW will not, (provided that the prices in both markets are similar – international arbitrage). With Polysar’s company wide profitability in mind, as well as spirit of fairness in representation for both segments using a de-centralized approach, our recommendation is the use of negotiated transfer pricing. This occurs when the NASA and EROW segments collaborate to agree on a selling/purchasing price for the internationally transferred butyl supply. Implementing this will cause both segments to have better information of the costs and benefits associated with the transfer.

Allocating overhead costs is one of the important tasks and is necessary to be done by management accountant. One key reason is that in term of pricing strategies, many firms decide their products’ selling price based on their cost. And the selling price has to cover all the costs and profit.

The current simple allocation approach is insurance premiums and sales commissions are tracked at the legal business unit entity and product line level to properly compensate sales agents. Certain support functions are only accounted for at the corporate level and are subsequently allocated to product lines and business units according to the number of policies outstanding. Along with the recent development trend, Hampton thinks that this approach cannot reflect the claim on resources that is made by various business units and product lines. She also realizes that although sales volume has increased, profitability declines. So a new approach is necessary and extremely urgent. Better and appropriate allocation approach can help management obtain more accurate insight into product profitability, make correct product pricing decisions and so on.

Perhaps one of the most difficult managerial decisions in the 21st century is the decision to make a decision. Analysis paralysis, endless meetings, and corporate structure have made it painstakingly difficult to come to any real conclusions. So when the Chief Financial Officer, Bruce Berman, of Bloomindale’s was tasked with decision to implement ProfitLogic’s Pricing Optimization (PO) system, he called upon Daniel Gabbay, an analyst in the finance division, to make sense of the numbers and guide his decision making process. Berman was considering implementing a PO system to quantify the markdown

The method showed that the pricing that was being used for the three products were not correct. The price at which the pumps were being sold was low were high whereas flow controllers were low. Because of which the most profitable product was coming out to be flow controllers whereas it was actually the least profitable.

The purpose of this paper is to answer a few important questions: Why do companies allocate costs? How do companies allocate costs? And how this cost allocation can affect the decision making of the company. It is important for the companies to find the proper method to allocate the costs. Cost allocation is an important issue in many companies because many of the costs associated with designing, producing and distributing products and services are not easily identified with the products and services that are created. It would have been easier for companies to allocate cost if costs were directly traceable with the products and the cost allocation would have been minor issue for the company. The decision-making

Marketing cost analysis is another important tool of marketing control. In recent years, business firms all over the world have experienced steep escalations in their marketing and distribution costs. They have found, to their dismay, that increased sales do not necessarily bring them increased profits. Containing marketing and distribution costs has