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Many companies have made progress in pricing – instituting pricing rules, creating pricing organizations, and getting high-level visibility on pricing performance. Few, however, have truly turned pricing into a competitive advantage. Unfortunately, the growing complexity of pricing demands that companies take their pricing capabilities to the next level of performance. This chapter outlines some of the ways that companies can take their pricing capabilities to a higher level of performance. Managers should look at these ideas and identify one or two areas where they will take their capabilities not just to good but to a level of world class. Those that do will increasingly be able to outperform their competitors and drive significant value to the company's bottom line.

The daily valuation of portfolio securities can be one of the most onerous aspects of managing a registered investment company or mutual fund. The developing complexity of securities combined with the increasing influence of foreign markets and nonexchange‐traded holdings have made the accurate pricing of securities difficult at best. Mutual funds typically rely on a myriad of sources to price their portfolio holdings, including domestic pricing services, broker‐dealers, foreign custodians or pricing agents, matrix pricing, fair value committees, or any combination thereof (see Exhibit). While the pricing function is typically delegated, fund management and the board of directors or trustees have the ultimate responsibility to ensure that appropriate pricing procedures and supervisory activities are in place.

In the affluent 1960s and 1970s, consumers tended to be price insensitive. Business consequently placed a low priority on pricing, and marketing educators in the USA responded by stressing the non‐price elements of the marketing mix. As a result, when consumers became more price sensitive in the 1980s and 1990s, and business became more concerned about pricing, marketing was not involved. Now, however, marketing educators are beginning to respond to the renewed emphasis on price as a key component in consumers’ perceived value. A new study shows an increase from 4 to 13 percent of US marketing education programs now including a course in pricing; another 22 percent are interested in adding one within two years.

The purpose of this study is to determine the availability of pricing courses in AACSB‐accredited undergraduate programs, determine what curricular trends are happening in the area of pricing, ascertain the status of price in the curriculum, and discuss the future direction for pricing in the curriculum.

The population examined consisted of institutions with undergraduate programs accredited in business by the AACSB. At the time the study was conducted, the AACSB's list of accredited schools numbered 443. The data for the study were obtained from the online versions of each school's catalog which could be accessed. The sample consisted of 363 (81.9 percent) of the accredited schools. The marketing offerings of each qualifying school were examined to determine the existence of a course devoted specifically to pricing or including pricing as a significant component.

The paper finds that a only 33 schools (9.1 percent) list a course in their online catalog that demonstrates a significant emphasis in pricing, and only 14 schools (3.9 percent) offer a course dedicated solely to the topic of pricing. Comparing this study with previous studies leads to the conclusion that the availability of pricing courses has not increased as anticipated, and has actually decreased.

Numerous papers have concluded that students majoring in marketing would benefit from taking a course in pricing. This paper asks why so few courses are offered given the interest in, and attention to, the topic. Business educators should be raising questions about the content of curricula being offered.

This study should raise awareness about the lack of attention toward pricing in the business curriculum. The study also indicates that additional research is needed to compare the curricula of programs not offering a stand‐alone pricing course with schools offering these courses, and begin to address this concern.

Despite its increased adoption by small, medium and large firms, pricing continues to be ignored in the C-suite. C-suite executives have minimal understanding of what pricing can do and how it impacts a firm’s performance. After two years in the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic crisis, consultants agree that the next wave of strategies and business models will require the development of strategic pricing capabilities, including analytics and software.

The authors conducted 49 interviews with CXOs, VPs of pricing and CEOs of pricing software vendors to understand how the best-performing companies use pricing to drive profits and select pricing technologies. Then, supported by the Professional Pricing Society, the world’s largest organization dedicated to pricing, the authors conducted a 2020 survey of 540 pricing professionals to understand the perceptions of pricing in the C-suite and how top executives prioritize pricing investments. The authors complemented their own research with analysis of publicly available data, analyst presentations and public comments by CEOs on pricing.

The authors propose a portfolio of 15 activities to include in the CEO’s strategic agenda and 10 actions to get started with in the short term. The next normal will not be based on business-as-usual. For the next three to five years, developing strategic pricing capabilities will give firms a competitive advantage over those who continue to neglect this hidden gem.

In the context of the accelerating economic recovery, the authors address one of the most pressing priority for the C-suite. The authors focus on a series of actions and activities that the C-suite can take to accelerate recovery and focus on profitable growth.

The purpose of this paper is to identify a set of specific activities and a set of competencies associated with above‐average firm performance.

Quantitative survey of 748 respondents.

It was found that four key competencies differentiate high performing from low performing companies: organizational confidence; pricing capabilities; organizational change capacity; and championing behaviors by top management. The research also identifies a set of specific activities that are linked with superior firm performance: activities directed at the improvement of pricing effectiveness (e.g. trainings, pricing tools; pricing performance reviews); improvements in product differentiation and product quality (e.g. through innovation and research aimed at identifying and creating customer value); increased sense of organizational confidence (e.g. optimism, resilience, “can do”‐attitude); improved support of top management; improved ability to stick to list prices and minimization of discounting behaviors; and finally, enhanced cultural adaptability to respond to changing market conditions.

Through a quantitative research design, the authors document the link between pricing capabilities, organizational confidence and superior firm performance.

The authors identify both specific activities, as well as higher order competencies, practising managers need to develop in order to increase firm performance via pricing. Taking a hypothetical company as example, the authors' data show that, on average, a one point improvement on a seven‐point scale in organizational confidence leads to a 4 per cent improvement in return on sales.

Our research highlights which organizational competencies drive firm performance. Specifically this research is the first quantitative survey which documents a positive relationships between organizational confidence and firm performance.

Very little attention has been paid to transfer pricing issues in the financial services sector Europe‐wide. This article reports on transfer pricing choices of UK deposit‐taking institutions. It is based on the results of an exploratory survey carried out on UK‐based banks and building societies. The main aim is to investigate their transfer pricing methods and objectives as well as the structure and line of responsibility for their transfer pricing decisions. The results of the survey reveal that the achievement of overall corporate goals is the highest ranked transfer pricing objective. Market pricing is the most widely used method among the institutions. Salient differences were however found between the transfer pricing choices of banks, on the one hand, and building societies, on the other.

This article advocates putting pricing strategy on the CEO's agenda and considers the new concept of pricing execution – the development of pricing strategy and the implementation of the strategy through a combination of leadership, management practice, and software – from the point of view of the senior management team.

New software tools give companies a new way of setting, optimizing, and enforcing pricing changes within the organization.

There has been an explosion of applications in the pricing management space. Pricing execution offers both growing and mature companies a lower‐risk approach to revenue, margin, profit, and shareholder‐value growth than innovation and acquisitions.

A proprietary 2005 Deloitte study of the available applications concludes that no one vendor offers a complete integrated solution.

Using software to improve pricing measurement, combined with better pricing execution, can help many organizations generate revenue rapidly.

CEOs and other leaders can use the article to educate the senior management team on the opportunity that pricing management represents.

Considers a number of aspects of pricing, including the classical relationship between price and supply and demand, pricing objectives, factors affecting pricing decisions and aspects of pricing policy and pricing methods. Explores the relevance of these concepts in the information marketplace. The central role that price plays in regulating a marketplace makes an understanding of pricing essential.

Understanding the effect of assortment composition on attentional levels is an essential topic for academic researchers and practitioners. This work has important implications when analyzing the influence of shopping frame time and search effort on the relationship between the reaction to assortment composition and visual attention to stock-keeping units (SKUs) pricing.

Two experimental studies through gauze behavior analysis technology (using eye-tracking equipment) analyze the variable's large assortment, visual attention to SKU pricing, search effort and shopping frame time.

The results suggest that, although it increases the search effort, a large assortment decreases the visual attention to SKU pricing. Further, our results indicate a moderating effect associated with mitigating the negative effect by medium-low levels of search effort and a moderating impact of time in this relation.

Marketing professionals can carefully optimize the in-store experience by managing the assortment and variety and by influencing consumers' visual attention to SKU pricing along the journey as part of the experience. Assortment and SKU pricing strategies need to be aligned with consumer journey design.

Our findings contribute to assortment theory and management by detailing the relationship between consumers' reactions to assortment perception and visual attention to SKU pricing in time flow. We reinforce the importance of considering assortment strategies from the consumer perspective and giving reliable information about in-store behavior.