Confessions of the Pricing Man: How Price Affects Everything
Product ID: 21486733
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The world’s foremost expert on pricing strategy shows how this mysterious process works and how to maximize value through pricing to company and customer. In all walks of life, we constantly make decisions about whether something is worth our money or our time, or try to convince others to part with their money or their time. Price is the place where value and money meet. From the global release of the latest electronic gadget to the bewildering gyrations of oil futures to markdowns at the bargain store, price is the most powerful and pervasive economic force in our day-to-day lives and one of the least understood. The recipe for successful pricing often sounds like an exotic cocktail, with equal parts psychology, economics, strategy, tools and incentives stirred up together, usually with just enough math to sour the taste. That leads managers to water down the drink with hunches and rules of thumb, or leave out the parts with which they don’t feel comfortable. While this makes for a sweeter drink, it often lacks the punch to have an impact on the customer or on the business. It doesn’t have to be that way, though, as Hermann Simon illustrates through dozens of stories collected over four decades in the trenches and behind the scenes. A world-renowned speaker on pricing and a trusted advisor to Fortune 500 executives, Simon’s lifelong journey has taken him from rural farmers’ markets, to a distinguished academic career, to a long second career as an entrepreneur and management consultant to companies large and small throughout the world. Along the way, he has learned from Nobel Prize winners and leading management gurus, and helped countless managers and executives use pricing as a way to create new markets, grow their businesses and gain a sustained competitive advantage. He also learned some tough personal lessons about value, how people perceive it, and how people profit from it. In this engaging and practical narrative, Simon leaves nothing out of the pricing cocktail, but still makes it go down smoothly and leaves you wanting to learn more and do more―as a consumer or as a business person. You will never look at pricing the same way again. Review: Wisdom packed - This book is dense with useful information and actions or insights. Sometimes I will read a book and go pages and pages before highlighting or writing in the margins when I find something useful. I feel like on almost every page, I'm jotting something or underlining. Simon is an expert and packs this book full of his knowledge. Review: Decent - Decent enough. Good stories and not totally dry. Good primer on pricing. Four stars from this humble reader. Two words
| Best Sellers Rank | #149,440 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #13 in Business Pricing #18 in Microeconomics (Books) #144 in Strategy & Competition |
| Customer Reviews | 4.5 out of 5 stars 495 Reviews |
A**7
Wisdom packed
This book is dense with useful information and actions or insights. Sometimes I will read a book and go pages and pages before highlighting or writing in the margins when I find something useful. I feel like on almost every page, I'm jotting something or underlining. Simon is an expert and packs this book full of his knowledge.
T**T
Decent
Decent enough. Good stories and not totally dry. Good primer on pricing. Four stars from this humble reader. Two words
D**K
Great Intro To Pricing
Excellent introduction to how pricing works. This was my first pricing related book and I would recommend this to anyone who wants to understand how it works and why it’s a great lever for your business.
C**.
Incredible and easy to read book about how to think about pricing
He pointed out very early in the book that when he was most interested in pricing, people acted like he was dumb for thinking about it. It's certainly a component of the supply demand curve that we didn't spend much time on in my microeconomics or macroeconomics classes. I really have to say that the book is extraordinary and eye-opening. I would not have bought such an expensive book normally, but a different author pointed to this book as one of his top 50. And I know that I'll re-read this book over and over again just to absorb the different lessons. It also made me think about how I price my own products. It was a great nudge to carefully consider all the factors before pricing anything.
R**N
Every Board Chairman, CEO, CFO and Sales manager should read this book
I follow pricing literature quite closely. Each book has its value, but many times it can drop rather quickly into the weeds of economic theory. This author is not afraid of complexity, but her does know how to create value for the reader. Pricing discipline for profit does drive everything and it is always wiser to maintain profit over volume. The analyses he presents with the multiple real world examples ( and you will likely recognize most of them) builds a very readable book in a genre that too often is not known for readability. Again I am struck by the contrast between firms understanding that they need to deliver value to a customer to stabilize/grow their profits, yet in North America it is all about commission sales based on volume, not profits. Every CEO, CFO and Sales manager should read this book.
V**B
Good read, but a bit repetitive
Very interesting book with many little things to know. Towards the end it becomes a bit repetitive.
R**S
A must have book
Great reading with lots of examples. A must read for any manager and C level executives. Sales and pricing is under looked in most business school this book is a great tool for better understanding of price dynamics.
N**H
THE textbook on pricing
This is a must read for anyone trying to overhaul the pricing of a product, or to just understand the intrinsic link between price and value for good products. It can be dense at times, but the academic analysis really breaks several pricing case studies down to core principles. You won't look at the price of goods the same again after reading this.
A**R
Brilliant book, but Kindle formatting distracts
This book is superb - engaging, rigorous, and full of informative stories. I couldn’t put it down. The only blemish is the Kindle formatting: there are repeated extra spaces before the apostrophe-s and plurals (e.g., “ word ’s” and "word s"), which jolts you out of the flow. Another reviewer flagged this years ago (2017), and it should be an easy tidy-up. For a £19.49 e-book marketed on quality, a simple search-and-replace would solve it quickly. I’m not knocking the author for his brilliant work - content is a solid 5★ - but please update the Kindle file.
A**S
I wanted more about how to raise your price without losing the market
The title has all of the information I want to share with readers. The book could have more on pricing early businesses.
J**N
Eye opening
Very interesting book with enough real-world examples that deliver the message. the book delivers on the point of the importance of pricing in a corporate strategy. totally recomended.
G**R
Excelente Libro para un Rediseño sobre tu Política de Precios con Gran Sentido Práctico
Ya seas una persona que trabaje en Marketing, Ventas en una empresa mediana o seas un emprendedor con una pequeña empresa o pequeño negocio, es una excelente opción para entrar de lleno a este tema y pensar cuales serán tus estrategias y tácticas de precios a establecer para los productos que manejas. El autor Herman Simmon te cuenta sobre su amplia experiencia sobre consultor de precios y mediante avanzas en el libro te van surgiendo varias ideas sobre como poner en práctica estas ideas en el día a día. Después de leer varios libros sobre Políticas de Precios, este libro es uno de mis favoritos debido a su sentido práctico, además de ser una lectura muy completa, no es una lectura ligera ya que tiene 200 páginas pero se disfruta bastante.
S**I
This is a terrific book, packed with insights and certainly the learnings ...
This is a terrific book, packed with insights and certainly the learnings of a lifetime. I am grateful to Dr Hermann Simon for sharing his learnings in a wider forum. The book is structured in the following manner. Chapter 1 tells us about how Dr Simon was initiated into the world of pricing. Chapters 2-4 offer a bird's eye view of pricing including how pricing is central to the economy, the psychology of pricing, and how pricing and strategy are interlinked. Chapters 5-7 cover the inner mechanics of pricing. Chapters 8-9 cover pricing innovations as well as pricing applications in real life scenarios including crises. Chapter 10 details how a CEO should approach the topic of pricing. The key learnings for me were undoubtedly around 1) how price cuts can severely damage profitability, illustrated well through examples of a fictional co in pgs 88-90. In fact those pages alone are well worth the price of the book 2) how performance incentives for sales guys can be aligned to the quantum of discounting that they offer to consumers. This alone can effectively increase your yield by 1-2% according to Dr Simon 3) how 2-dimensional pricing can help businesses segment market (enabling price discrimination) and thereby driving up your yields. I encourage every strategy officer, product manager, and well anyone interested in enhancing profits to read this book.
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