Reduce Price to Improve Revenues and Margins

CHOICE 1 OBJECTIVE: ATTRACT CUSTOMERS

CHOICE 2 ISOLATE SEGMENTS: PERFORMANCE PERCEPTION SEGMENT

CHOICE 3 COMPONENT: CHANGE THE BENEFIT PACKAGE

No. SIC Year Notes
1 2086 2005 Before taxes the company makes 7.5 cents on the dollar – $10.5 million on $140 million in revenue last year. The firm is tiny alongside Poland Spring, Dasani and Aquafina. What Niagara offers is low prices: Superior Markets, a 19-store chain in southern California, pays only $2.60 for a case of 24 half-liter bottles, compared with $4.30 to $4.70 for Dasani or Aquafina. It survives by slashing costs continually.
2 2399 2004 When Levi began to sell to Wal-Mart Stores last year, it overhauled its entire operation, from design to production, pricing to distribution. Levi launched a segmentation strategy. It would sell different versions of jeans for different prices, from Levi Strauss Signature jeans to $150 upscale vintage designs. The sales didn't go as well as it had planned, at Wal-Mart and different department stores. Levi was forced to sell to Costco Wholesale Corp., which it originally thought would tarnish Levi's brand image. Wal-Mart also slashed the price of a basic pair of men's Levi Strauss Signature jeans to $19 from $23.
3 2671 1992 Sun is trying to manage a transition to a new line of powerful workstation computers. 17-30% discounts on old workstations not boosting sales.
4 3571 2003 Hewlett-Packard's new point-of-sale (POS) computers, which are basically souped-up PCs, enable HP to sell them to retailers for half as much as the cheapest POS-specific machines made by rivals such as IBM and NCR.
5 3674 2001 Intel's latest price cuts came Monday, when it rolled out a 1.7 gigahertz version of its flagship Pentium 4 line. It cut the price of its former top-speed device – the 1.5 gigahertz P4 – by 60%.
6 3711 2004 The new Cadillac STS, a 320-horsepower luxury sedan with a V-8, was introduced at Paris Motor Show. This new car is aimed at Americans who want a European-style luxury car and the Europeans themselves, going up in direct competition with mainstays like the BMW 5 Series, Mercedes E-Class and Audi A-6. With prices ranging from $41,000 to $63,000, the models are around $7,000 less than comparable European sedans.
7 3944 1991 Taiwanese knockoffs of roller blades are priced as much as 75% off the standard Rollerblades.
8 3949 2001 Competition in the golf club market is mainly limited to a few big companies and a few small ones. Most midsize players were kicked out in 1998 during a market meltdown. Marketing costs are so high that few can battle the big boys. That doesn't mean the big firms are immune to competitive risks, however. Adams Golf Inc. and Orlimar Golf Co. slashed prices of their top clubs to $299, at least $100 less than the top companies premium clubs.
9 4141 2005 New York's Chinatown is a short walk from South Station, Greyhound's base. Waiting at curbsides, Chinese buses enticed their passengers away. In spring the lure grew: a new company named Lucky Star appeared with a $10 fare to New York. The others were forced to match it.
10 4512 1992 Braniff airlines charges its passengers $100 or so less than its larger competitors, but has few daily departures with a fleet of only 10 planes.
11 4512 2005 The budget airline boom that swept the U.S. and Europe in recent years is finally hitting Asia. The best fares are often short-term, promotional efforts. But even the regular full-fare prices on discount carriers can offer considerable savings over full-service airlines. A regular Tiger Airways' round-trip fare between Singapore and Phuket adds up to about $86, almost $200 less than the same route on a major airline.
12 4724 1990 Discounted tickets sold by consolidators can often be inconvenient: availability can be uneven, tickets usually sold only for coach seats, generally require stopovers and carry time restrictions. They also can't be transferred to other airlines for last minute changes.
13 4841 2003 SBC Communications cut its lowest broadband price 10%, far below the average of about $45 per month charged by cable companies. SBC and other phone companies are still playing catch-up with the cable guys, who control about 2/3 of the market for high-speed Internet. Phone companies are turning to price cutting to close the gap. For now, cable companies are mostly holding prices steady and instead are competing by offering ever-faster service. That could lead to a two-tiered consumer broadband market. Phone companies could wind up charging lower rates to people who use the Internet mostly for browsing and e-mail, while cable companies take the high-end customers who will pay more for quicker downloading of streaming video and other applications.
14 5331 1986 Price Club's merchandise is sold at an average margin of about 9.5%. Compares w/ avg. margin of 50% at dept. stores, 30% at other discount stores and 20% at food retailers.
15 5600 1988 Dress Barn offers quality labeled fashions at a 20-50% discount from department store prices.
16 5942 1987 Contrasting the industry trend to stop cutting prices, Crown Books Corp. discounts its best sellers by 40%, compared with 35% in 1985.
17 6211 1999 Online brokers are cheaper. But even in the online world, you get what you pay for, Business Week says. The $29.95 you pay for a trade at Charles Schwab brings more research and better tools than does the $20 at DLJdirect Inc.
18 7372 2005 Electronic Arts Inc. and Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. are battling over sports rights in the video game world. Take-Two cut a deal to market an underperforming series of sports video games named after ESPN, the sports channel. Then it jolted the game world by setting a price of just $20, less than half the going rate. It was a direct challenge to Electronic Arts Inc., the biggest videogame maker, for whom sports is a crucial franchise.
19 7374 2008 Priceline.com boasts a revolutionary "name your own price" concept of bidding sight-unseen for hotels, airline tickets, and rental cars (launched in 1998). The core of Priceline's US business remains its "opaque" inventory of chain lodgings whose identities and exact locations aren't revealed to customers until they've committed to a non-refundable purchase that includes taxes and Priceline fee. Hotels set their own "distressed inventory" rates for Priceline, which vary by demand. A possible recession encourages bargain-conscious US travelers to trade choice and flexibility for discounts (usually 30% to 60%). However, bidding requires specific consumer skills. One is "Be A Shrewd Shopper:" check the lowest published rates at hotel websites or an aggregator item such as Kayak.com for properties with similar characteristics.
20 7941 2006 In June, the Giants announced that they need to sell licenses for every seat in the new stadium to raise $370 million. Fans can buy the rights to seats comparable to the ones they now hold. The fixed prices start at $1,000 for the upper deck and rise to $20,000 for the field level. The tickets themselves cost $85 to $700. Fans were very displeased with these new costs.

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