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Personally, I would probably consider printer/copier paper to be a commodity product.  Obviously you don’t want to think that if you are in this market.  This interview with Double A paper’s Thirawit Leetavorn explains how (Australian firm?) Double A has developed a brand with awareness, differentiation and preference through advertising.  You could follow up this video with a couple of ads — the “Girl on the Copier” doesn’t do much for differentiation, but it’s viral and buzz potential built awarness.  Another add – “No Jam” develops one of its key points of differentiation.  This video series could be used with our books chapter 2 (marketing strategy planning), chapter 4 (positioning), or with a discussion of the product life cycle (market maturity), in Promotion tied to promotion objectives or advertising to create differentiation, or even around pricing.  It’s also nice to show students some international examples.

This is our 100th post here at “Teach the 4 Ps.”  We were not sure how this would go — but we seem to be building a following and have received good feedback.  So we are going to keep going for our second 100 posts.

I heard another great story on Marketplace radio.  The story, titled “What prices really mean,” (links to a listen and transcript) is an interview with William Poundstone, author of the recently published “The Myth of Fair Value.”  The author describes psychological research in the area of pricing — and how marketers manipulate perceptions of price and value.  It sounds interesting — I have the book on order, I will let you know what I think.

UPDATE, January 25, 2010.  BusinessWeek favorably reviewed the book as well, “Why the Price is Rarely Right” (January 21, 2010).

Last month I connected you with an article about about “Subway’s $5 Footlong.”  These days value sells in the quick serve restaurant industry.  So Quiznos, which had tried to stay a bit more upscale than Subway, responded with a value campaign and its torpedo sandwiches.  Quiznos has had success and you can read about it in this recent article on BusinessWeek’s site, “Damn! Torpedoes Get Quiznos Back on Track” (January 14, 2010)

Here is an article bound to generate some classroom interest.  “Why it costs more to be a woman,” appeared on the MSN Money site (December 15, 2009).  You could assign the reading or simply read it for ideas you could inject into a class discussion of pricing.  I can see providing images of some of the examples with actual prices — perhaps finding images and prices at a site like Amazon.com or Drugstore.com.  Then the class could be asked why these companies have chosen this pricing strategy?  Is it legal?  Ethical?

The Wal-Mart vs. Amazon battle continues to become increasingly intense (see “Price War Brews Between Amazon and Wal-Mart,” New York Times, November 23, 2009). These two competitors have already engaged in price wars over toys, books, and DVDs this holiday season.  Now Wal-Mart is cleverly using one of their strengths relative to Amazon — their physical stores — to their advantage.  This a nice example of competitive advantage, SWOT, and logistics.  Check out “Wal-Mart Uses Its Stores To Get an Edge Online” (see The Wall Street Journal, December 15, 2009 – subscription required, or search the net using the article title).

With the holiday season here, there is more talk about Best Buy — which is also the focus of the chapter opening scenario we use for our retailing and wholesaling chapter.  A BusinessWeek article “Why Tech Bows to Best Buy” (December 10, 2009) the company’s strategy now that its direct competitors have largely gone out of business (see Circuit City) and new competitors Amazon and Wal-Mart are emerging.  Consequently Best Buy has changed its strategy. The article supplements discussions of competition (chapter 3), strategy planning (chapter 4) and retailing.

You can also watch a Wall Street Journal video below, “Best Buy’s Battle Between Sales and Margins” (December 15, 2009) includes an interview ith an analyst who discusses how competition and the need to lower prices has eroded Best Buy’s margins.  A bit more finance oriented, this video might complement a classroom discussion of pricing.

This short Wall Street Journal video clip (2:41) interviews the founder of B.R. Guest Restaurant.  He talks about building buzz and creating value as the keys to his restaurants success.

A couple years ago Kodak (my former employer — too many years ago) decided to get into the printer business.  To compete with established players like HP, Canon and Espson, Kodak decided to come out with lower priced ink.  The company has had a slow start — although 2009 saw them double market share, they are still only at 2% share.  The article and video describe the company’s latest efforts.   “Kodak printer ads remind consumers of lower ink costs,” USA Today, November 30, 2009.

This is another segment from Fortune’s interview with new P&G CEO Bob McDonald and his immediate predecessor A.G. Lafley. These leaders talk about the development of a product line (including some lower price products) and how they try to compete with private label brands. They also talk briefly about some of the qualitative marketing research that P&G has conducted. The clip might also be interesting to show when discussing value pricing — which we cover in the first of our two pricing chapters.

This video (below)/article (“The Accidental Hero,” BusinessWeek.com, November 5, 2009) combination tells the story of a very successful Subway promotion.  The promotion was originally the idea of a Miami franchisee who successfully launched it locally.  It was later picked up nationally and has helped Subway provide more value during hard economic times.  The video can be used as an example of sales-oriented pricing objectives or as an example of odd-even pricing.  The story also shows the value of listening to franchisees.