Exam 17: Price Setting in the Business World

Randy Todd, marketing manager for Sporting Products, Inc. (SPI), is thinking about how changes taking place among retailers in his channel might impact his strategy. SPI sells the products it produces through wholesalers and retailers. For example, SPI sells basketballs to Wholesale Supply for $8.00. Wholesale Supply uses a 20 percent markup and most of its "sport shop" retailer customers, like Robinson's Sporting Goods, use a 33 percent markup to arrive at the price they charge final consumers. However, one fast growing retail chain, Sports Depot, only uses a 20 percent markup for basketballs, even though it pays Wholesale Supply the same price as other retailers. Furthermore, Sports Depot occasionally lowers the price of basketballs and sells them at cost-to draw customers into its stores and stimulate sales of its pricey basketball shoes. Sports Depot is also using other pricing approaches that are different from the sports shops that usually handle SPI products. For example, Sports Depot prices all of its baseball gloves at $20, $40, or $60-with no prices in between. There are three big bins - one for each price point. Todd is also curious about how Sports Depot's new strategy to increase sales of tennis balls will work out. The basic idea is to sell tennis balls in large quantities to nonprofit groups who resell the balls to raise money. For example, a service organization at a local college bought 2,000 tennis balls printed with the college logo. Sports Depot charged $.50 each for the tennis balls-plus a $500 one-time charge for the stamp to print the logo. The service group plans to resell the tennis balls for $2.50 each and contribute the profits to a shelter for the homeless. Todd is not certain if Sports Depot ideas will affect SPI's plans. For example, SPI is considering adding tennis racquets to the lines it produces. This would require a $500,000 addition to its factory as well as the purchase of new equipment that costs $1,000,000. The variable cost to produce a tennis racquet would be $20, but Todd thinks that SPI could sell the racquet at a wholesale price of $40 each. That would allow most retailers to add their normal markup and make a profit. However, if Sports Depot sells the racquet at a lower than normal price other retailers might decide to carry it. Which of the following would NOT be one of SPI's fixed costs in the production of basketballs?

With regard to bid pricing, a marketing manager should be aware that:

A company has total fixed cost of $120,000. Its variable cost per unit is $2.00 and its price per unit is $3.50. The break-even point in units is:

It costs a producer $400 to manufacture a product that is distributed through wholesalers and retailers. The markups at the producer, wholesaler, and retailer levels are 20%, 20% and 50%, respectively. The wholesaler's selling price for the product is __________, and the retailer's selling price is ___________.

Total fixed cost

With complementary product pricing, different price levels are set on different products because the products are targeted at different market segments.

A low stockturn decreases inventory carrying cost and frees up working capital.

A certain item has a production cost of $24. The manufacturer takes a 25 percent markup, the wholesaler takes a 20 percent markup, and the retailer takes a 50 percent markup. Therefore, the item has a retail selling price of $80.

Prestige pricing is most common for luxury products such as furs, jewelry, and perfume.

Which of the following costs decrease with increase in output?

Break-even analysis can be useful for:

A "markup chain" can be used to calculate the price structure in a whole channel.

With bid pricing, it is best for the bidder to use the same overhead and profit rates on all jobs since that will make it easy to estimate costs and eventually will increase profits.

Marginal analysis

Sequential price reductions and clearance sales are the same thing.

Regarding bid pricing:

A firm that is using marginal analysis to set prices finds that setting a price of $180 per unit would result in the sale of 6 units. The total variable cost of production is equal to $300 and total fixed cost is equal to $150. In this case, the firm's total revenue will be _____.

A disadvantage of average-cost pricing is that it

The change in a company's total cost from producing one more unit is called:

Identify a disadvantage of break-even analysis.