f3badd75_trepreneurship___Bauer_College__Topic
[Date] February 11 [Speaker] Mark Bergen Minnesota [Topic] 
"Managing to do Pricing: The Role of Partial Models"" Click here to read Abstract We use qualitative data from a two year ethnographic study to analyze the key elements of the price adjustment processes used at a large industrial manufacturer and several of its major customers. We focus on a specific episode, a price cut, which most vividly exemplifies the themes that emerge from our data. In the specific episode, market considerations clearly dictate that the firm should cut prices, and everyone in the firm agrees with this assessment, suggesting a fairly straightforward organizational decision. Yet when we look deeper, and dissect how the firm implemented the price cut, we uncover a rich tapestry of frictions hidden within the organization. We document four specific themes that emerge from the analyses of the data. (1) Each manager (or each group) within the firm handles only a part of the economic complexities of a given pricing problem, using partial (albeit coherent) models of the marketplace. (2) Yet, when viewing the organization as a whole, across the different managers and groups, many of the economic complexities of the marketplace are covered. (3) The partial models used by managers may collide, creating market based conflicts between managers and groups within organizations. (4) These collisions between partial models of market considerations interact with organizational considerations to intensify the conflicts between managers. We discuss how these findings relate to the pricing literature in marketing and economics, and how they offer an opportunity to bring these literatures together with the organizational behavior literature. We also discuss how managers can use these findings to help their organizations price more effectively.
Spring 11 Seminars - Dept. of Marketing & Entrepreneurship | Bauer College
Topic