AN EVALUATION OF PRICING STRATEGIES AND ITS IMPACT ON MARKETING DECISION.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

In a dynamic and ever growing environment such as the Nigeria economy firms and marking organization must adopt the right strategies in order to remain competitive in the market. A strategy refers to the skills and decision making process of the management of the company or firms or organization. It is also used to refer to the output of the process. This, a marking strategy can have a broad impact on the business in terms of instilling a marketing orientation among all those in the firms, the way of thinking or philosophy of the whole organization. However, marketing strategy can alternatively be seen as dealing with the development of competitive advantages directly associated with the marketing function, such as customer loyalty and distribution channel control. Hence an organization like the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) have a marketing strategy focus on broad or philosophical approach while other prefer a narrower or functional view. In the case, the domain is sometimes even further restricted by focusing attention on the various elements of marketing mix rather than more general issues of customer and channel relationship (Wensley, 1995). In an organization like the Power Holding Company (PHCN) its marketing is said to be a reflection of the marketing activities that take place in an organization sometimes it is tagged the 4ps of marketing and it include product, price, place, and promotion. Pricing as a marketing mix variable is an important determinant of one firms’ success and mother’s failure pricing has to be timely and appropriate in order to achieve its desired objectives. Evidence abound for product and service which met staff competition as a result of pricing strategy adopted and have consequently failed. Similarly, pricing is considered by many to be key activity within the free enterprise system and organization system. A products’ price influences the price paid for the factors of production-land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship. Price thus is a basic regulator of the economic system because in influences the allocation of these factors of production. High wages attract capital. As an allocation of scarce resources, price determines what will be produced (supply) and who will get the goods and services that are produced (demand). A product’s price is a major determinant of the market demand for the item. Price affects a firms’ competitive position and its market share. As a result price has a considerable bearing on a company and organization (PHCN) revenue and net profit. It is only through price that money comes into a well established organization. Customers rely heavily on price as an indicator of a decision with incomplete information. Some customers perception of product quality vary directly with price. Thus, the higher the price, the better the quality is perceived to be customers take this judgment particularly when no other dues as to product quality are available customers quality perception can of course also be influenced by such thing as sheer reputation.