Value and Pricing Strategy Seminar

Dr. Irwin Gross
Professor Emeritus of Marketing, Penn State
Founding Director, ISBM

November 5 - 6, 2008
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Location TBD

Register

Yet, throughout business practice, we find that businesses usually know their cost(s) very well, but don't have even a crude understanding of the value they bring to their customers. Markets are usually targeted based on how valuable they are to the firm, rather than on how valuable the firm is to them. As a result, large chunks of profit are often left on the table. Participants report that this seminar has had immediate impact in better pricing, more effective marketing decisions, and improved profits.

Objectives

This seminar can help participants to improve sales and profits by showing how customer value can be measured and used as the driving force in marketing and pricing. It covers market and price dynamics throughout the competitive cycle of an industry. Participants will be better able to manage marketing and pricing strategies for unique new offerings, as well as commodity-like products and services.

Who Should Attend

People who develop, contribute to, or implement strategies for products or services sold to business and industry:

• business directors
• planning managers
• market/product managers
• pricing managers
• sales managers
• product/market development managers

Seminar Content

Value Concepts

• Values, Costs, and Prices: An operational definition of the value of a product to a user. Development of a conceptual structure that shows the relationship between price, costs, and values.
• Value-in-Use: How to assess the economic value of new products or significant product performance differences, and to think through pricing and marketing implications of the value analysis.
• Relative Perceived Value: A conceptual structure for assessing the customer value of attributes which cannot be assessed by objective value analysis, along with techniques for applying the concepts.
• Value-Driven Market Strategies: Value-based market segmentation, positioning, and targeting.

Value and Price Dynamics

• The Product-Market as a Complex System: Understanding competitive dynamics under "normal" competitive conditions in commodity-like markets. The impact on markets of cost dynamics production capacity additions will be examined.
• How Industry Leaders Must Manage Their Industries as Well as Their Businesses: Gut reactions to events like business downturns or competitive thrusts, and simplistic aggressive actions, often produce unanticipated negative outcomes. We will consider how the market as a whole is likely to respond to such events and, thereby, enable market leaders to take actions which will produce better net results.
• Managing a Premium Position: How to manage a premium position in a market and to sustain it at a higher level for a longer time.
• Managing the Commodity Price: The commodity price as an equilibrium of forces. Managing it by avoiding mistakes, particularly mistakes of pricing below what the market will bear.

Format

The two-day seminar meets from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. each day. It combines lecture and discussion, real business and industrial examples, case studies, and exercises. The class size is intentionally kept small to provide ample time for extensive discussion and interaction.

Instructor

Dr. Irwin Gross is the founding director of the ISBM and professor emeritus of marketing at Penn State's Smeal College of Business.

Prior to founding the ISBM, Dr. Gross directed DuPont's Corporate Marketing Research Division, was associate professor of marketing at the Wharton School and the foundation Professor of Marketing at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

He has written and lectured widely on pricing and business strategy.

LOCATION

This seminar will be held at a hotel location in the Philadelphia area. Details will be provided at registration.

FEE

ISBM Member fee: $1,500 USD
Non-Member Fee: $2,500 USD

Register

CANCELLATION POLICY

• Up to October 6, 2008 —no fee
• Between October 7 - 21, 2008—$100 fee
• After October 22, 2008—full conference fee due
• All substitutions within 14 days prior to the seminar will be subject to a $50.00 administrative fee.
  

For more information

Paula Dorminy or Gary Holler
Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM)
Smeal College of Business
The Pennsylvania State University
484 Business Building
University Park PA 16802-3603

Phone: 814-863-2782
Fax: 814-863-0413
E-mail: isbm@psu.edu