Pricing at an enterprise consists of several interrelated stages: collecting and analyzing market information, formulating and justifying the goals of pricing policy for a certain period, choosing methods for its implementation, setting the price level and developing a system of discounts and allowances for them, adjusting the pricing policy depending on market conditions.
The pricing policy of the enterprise is a mechanism for making certain decisions regarding the behavior of the enterprise on the market in order to achieve the main goals of economic activity.
There are three main goals that enterprises strive to achieve by implementing pricing policies: sales, market retention and profit maximization. The choice of purpose determines the essence of the price strategy of the enterprise for a certain period.
The main primary goal of enterprises that feel competition in the market is to ensure the sale of manufactured products. This is especially important in conditions when there are more and more analogues of products offered by other manufacturers. The choice of this goal is due to the fact that consumer demand in conditions of an abundance of goods is price elastic. Or this goal may be due to the desire of the enterprise to maximize sales and increase total profit by reducing income from each unit of goods sold. If the company is ready to lower prices, this will help to expand sales and capture a more extensive niche in the market.
If the company seeks to maximize profits, then it should maximize current profits. This can be done after assessing the demand and costs, on the basis of which you can choose a price that is able to maximize cost recovery.
To maintain the market with the help of pricing policy, it is necessary to maintain the current market position, which requires measures to reduce competition or prevent a decline in sales.
The pricing policy of the enterprise is a complex phenomenon, it is influenced by many different factors. Therefore, the choice of the general direction in this policy, the main approaches to the development of prices, the features of the accompanied sale of the service, and other areas must be justified by the data obtained as a result of the analysis of the data of a detailed marketing research.
Prices and pricing policies of an enterprise are one of the most important components of marketing an enterprise. Prices directly depend on the other aspects of the organization’s activities; they largely determine commercial results.
The meaning of pricing policy is reduced to setting such prices on products in order to gain as much market share as possible and achieve the planned level of profit for solving strategic development tasks.
The company's pricing policy links all private decisions (assortment of prices, price breakdowns, prices for new products, price matching with competitors, discount system, etc.) into an integrated (single) system.
Each enterprise approaches pricing problems depending on the characteristics of its own economic realities. A great influence on the solution of these issues is exerted by sales services, heads of economic and accounting services.
To set prices for products, the company relies on marketing research, and also takes into account the degree of state regulation, the dynamics of demand, the impact of competition, the needs of wholesale buyers, and other factors. In doing so, economic criteria of an internal and external nature are taken into account.
The internal criteria may be the specifics of the product, production process, market tactics, production mobility, advertising, sales service, etc.
External criteria may be political instability, lack of resources, inflation dynamics, nature of consumer demand, etc.