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Discounting has become the crack cocaine of senior management with terrifying effects on both revenue and profits. The purpose of this paper to show managers how and where to put a stake in the ground to kick the discounting habit and move to a more effective and disciplined approach to pricing.

The author leverages his research on trust in buyer seller relationships with extensive experience with real world pricing to provide insights in why and when discounting is not appropriate and how business can benefit in terms of both profits and revenue growth by adopting more appropriate pricing tactics.

Prior research has shown that more effective pricing can lead to an 11 percent improvement in a firm's profitability. By focusing on eliminating unnecessary discounting, managers can improve profits by more than 20 percent. Specific management tactics are identified which reflect the realities of doing business in today's world of increased competition, product commoditization and sophisticated buyers.

Provides insights in why and when discounting is not appropriate and how business can benefit in terms of both profits and revenue growth by adopting more appropriate pricing tactics.

As pricing has evolved as a specialty over the past 20 years, there has been increased focus on the concept of value – what it is, how to measure it, and why it is important. Value is important not only for setting prices but for establishing product and negotiating strategies and tactics. This chapter first discusses the importance of value in the price-setting process. Second, it frames how to define and measure value. Last, it explains how value tools can help salespeople in their negotiations process. It will review the application of these value measures in a business-to-business (B2B) environment and report on a technique of value measurement called Case ROI™. This measurement is particularly useful because it calculates the value of new products, technologies, and services at both the segment and the individual customer levels with a higher level of precision and relevance than other methods. It is based on a field-value-in-use technique that will be discussed in detail.

In terms of the life cycle, pricing certainly would be considered a young and emerging discipline, only a few decades old. Even marketing is only 50 years old as a business discipline; Jerome McCarthy of Michigan State University introduced the Four P's classification (product, promotion, price, and place-distribution) in 1960. Peter Drucker's influential The Practice of Management hailed the twentieth century as a “marketing revolution” in 1954, but mentions pricing fewer than a dozen times, even then only in passing.

George E. Cressman, Jr. is President and Founder of World Class Pricing, Inc. George spent 30 years in industry, and has been consulting in marketing strategy, competitive strategy, and pricing for 15 years. George provides marketing and pricing solutions for global business-to-business and business-to-consumer firms. George has been named Marketer of the Year by the American Marketing Association, and is a frequent speaker in management education programs.

This paper examines four underlying trends in the changing business environment relating to information technology and geographic, functional and sectorial integration. It discusses three required changes in management focus needed to reach global profitability from product inception to promotion. The skills required for this change are listed by functional area, although the techniques are predominantly cross‐cultural. This paper explains the steps needed to move from a traditional firm to a globally competitive network and the cultural barriers to building consumer‐focused extended‐value chains. Finally it discusses ways in which business school education can promote strategic thinking about profitability and heighten awareness of the potential gains from cooperative inter‐firm partnerships.

Fingerhut, based in Minnetonka, Minnesota, is a direct-marketing company that sells a smorgasbord of consumer goods through an array of specially targeted catalogs. In November 1996, an article in the Star Tribune, a major Minneapolis newspaper, drew attention to a class-action lawsuit pending against Fingerhut that suggests the firm made its profits by exploiting the poor. Several civil rights groups rallied around the suit and submitted amicus curiae in favor of the litigation. The case illustrates issues in ethics and management communication. Discussions focus on the constituencies. Is Fingerhut exploiting its customers or providing them with an affordable method of obtaining valued consumer goods on credit? Do retailers have a duty to offer products at reasonable prices? Are the high interest rates reasonable given the risk? What are the options: pawn shops, rent-to-own? What is the profile of the typical Fingerhut customer? Discussions also focus on the issues communicating to the constituencies. How much damage will the lawsuit do to Fingerhut's image as an ethical, socially conscious company? What communication strategies can the firm employ? Should it react to the lawsuit? What should it tell its employees?

This chapter describes five disciplinary domains of research or lenses that contribute to the design of a team tutor. We focus on four significant challenges in developing Intelligent Team Tutoring Systems (ITTSs), and explore how the five lenses can offer guidance for these challenges. The four challenges arise in the design of team member interactions, performance metrics and skill development, feedback, and tutor authoring. The five lenses or research domains that we apply to these four challenges are Tutor Engineering, Learning Sciences, Science of Teams, Data Analyst, and Human–Computer Interaction. This matrix of applications from each perspective offers a framework to guide designers in creating ITTSs.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2019.

The paper provides a brief description of all 370 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested as a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.