Strategic Pricing and Management Accounting

Management accountants should have a key role to play in developing and executing pricing strategy and policy. However, their historical focus on costing and operations means that their potential as business partners with marketing and sales professionals is easily overlooked. This book focuses on how management accountants can help key stakeholders in the formulation and execution of pricing policy and, conversely, on showing managers responsible for pricing decisions how they could be helped by management accountants. It equips management accountants with a unique overview of pricing theory, the practical, quantitative techniques they should know and the value they can bring to the pricing function. The book analyses segmentation, value to customer, price-value maps, segmental pricing, product differentiation and dynamic pricing, with traditional economic theory, showing how these ideas have implications for management accountants and the value that they can bring to the business. Differences in customer value have been integral to economic theory for decades and price discrimination, the technique of charging different prices to different customers for the same or similar goods, is well-established. This observation provides the central core of this book. The methods of price discrimination are set out in detail, showing how management accountants can bring their analytical skills to bear in helping executives and pricing professionals take advantage of differences in customer valuation to improve profits. The book provides a thorough overview of the field and offers a good introduction for researchers and students. Equally, the book shows managers, marketers and pricing professionals how management accountants can assist them in delivering better pricing practice.

David Dugdale is Emeritus Professor of Management Accounting at the University of Bristol, UK. He was awarded the CIMA Shield for services to the Institute in 2002 and a Lifetime Achievement Award by the British Accounting and Finance Association in 2014.

1. Introduction 2. Surveys of pricing practice 3. Market segmentation and price fences 4. Value-based pricing 5. Price-value maps 6. Basic economics 7. Behavioural economics 8. Pricing strategies 9. Demographic and geographic pricing 10. Quantity-based pricing 11. Product differentiation and pricing 12. Indirect price discrimination: time-based methods 13. Competition 14. Customer profitability 15. Segmentation, customers and negotiations 16. Price discrimination in economic theory 17. Conclusion