Política de Precios (Artículo Inglés)

MARKETING
Companies are fine-tuning their price strategies-and it's paying off
How did Ford Motor Co. manage to earn $7.2 billion last year, more than any auto maker in history? The hot economy helped. But Ford couldn't have done it without a new pricing strategy that helped upgrade the mix of vehicles it sells. From 1995 to 1999, Ford's U. S. market share fell, from 25.7% to 23.8%. Ordinarily,that's cause for alarm. But behind those numbers was a 420,000-unit decrease in sales of low-margin vehicles, such as Escorts and Aspires, and a 600,000-unit increase in sales of high-margin vehicles, such as Crown Victorias and Explorers. Ford cut prices on its most profitable vehicles enough to spur demand but not so much that they ceased to have attractive margins. "This is probably thebiggest driver of Ford's profitability," says Lloyd E. Hansen, Ford's controller for North America and global marketing.
Chalk up another victory for the power of smart pricing. While most companies have gotten savvy about cutting costs, few have figured out how much money they are giving up by using lunk-headed pricing strategies. Lacking detailed information about market demand and their own supplycapabilities, companies routinely overprice some products and under-price others. Hansen admits that until about 1995, Ford was among the offenders.Its sales force was compensated on how many units it sold, regardless of their profit margins. So it tended to push the low-margin cheapos — because you could move more units with less spending of precious marketing dollars. Soviet central plannerswould have nodded in recognition.
The new strategy of smart pricing draws on microeconomics, buyer psychology, and the computing power to sift through lots of data on spending patterns. For example, Atlanta's Talus Solutions Inc., which developed yield-management software for airlines and hotels, is teaching its tricks to other businesses, ranging from United Parcel Service Inc. to apartmentlandlords to a major TV network. Clued-in companies are boosting profit margins — and dealing a blow to the idea that the Internet will inevitably drive down all prices toward marginal costs.
As one of the world's biggest companies, Ford is a good testing ground for the new pricing approach. Starting in 1995, it stepped up market research to find features that "the customer was wiling to pay for but theindustry was slow to deliver," such as more comfortable supercabs on trucks, says Hansen. Second, it set up its sales units as businesses and told them which vehicles and option packages made Ford the most money — so they would stop pushing the dogs. Third, with assistance from Talus, it rejiggered pricing to encourage customers to move up to better, higher-profit vehicles. In 1998, the first fiveU.S. sales regions that tried the new strategy collectively beat their profit targets by $1 billion, while the 13 that didn't missed their targets by about $250 million, says Hansen. Last year, all 18 regions were on board.
It's no coincidence that airlines were the first to get smart about pricing. As long ago as the late 1960s, travel agents were comparing their prices and placing orders oncomputer screens. The airlines eventually figured out that the key to making money was to segment customers by their willingness to pay. They squashed discount carriers People Express and Sir Freddie Laker's Skytrain by offering superlow fares with lots of restrictions for travelers on tight budgets. Today, the prices paid for seats on a flight are as unique as snow-flakes. Hotel companies, startingwith Marriott International Inc. in the 1980s, followed suit.
PERISHABLE. The lessons of airlines and hotels aren't entirely applicable to other industries because plane seats and hotel beds are perishable — if they go empty, the revenue opportunity is lost forever. So it makes sense to slash prices to top off capacity if it's possible to do so without dragging down the prices that other...