外文文献原稿与译文.docVIP

PAGE 13 外文文献原稿和译文 原 稿 Introduction One of the hardest decisions an organization has to make is how to price its products. Price a product too low and you may not cover your costs or generate profits. Price the product too high and potential customers never turn into paying customers. Pricing strategies help a manager to answer such questions as: How should I price my product? How much will sales fall if I increase my price? To whom would your product lose market share to if price changes appeared? Are there price thresholds? Should I price products differently to achieve maxi-mum sales of the entire line? Marketing research has long recognized the importance of price optimization. Survey research can help explore those pricing questions. Survey pricing evaluation can be thought of as a continuum that moves from quick and easy but less precise to complicated but more accurate methods. Among these methods are: Direct methods, including willingness to pay (WTP), or what price would you pay eliciting, and incentive-aligned WTP techniques. Indirect methods, such as Gabor-Granger, traditional and extended van Westendorp models. Product/Price Mix methods, such as Discrete Choice, and Advanced Choice Models. In fact, some of the best known econometricians have developed techniques to address these problems. For instance, Clive W. J. Granger, Nobel Prize winner in economics in 2003, is best known for his numerous papers and books on econometrics and time-series analysis. An area of his research that is less known was done in collaboration with André Gabor on a pricing model project for the Nottingham University Consumer Study Group in the 1960s. Granger recalled in: During this period I was also involved with André Gabor on some practical price research. To get data to test our theories and estimate models, we arranged with local supermarkets to conduct experiments in which we altered prices of popular products and recorded the change in sales. I believe that more econ