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NewswireToday - /newswire/ -
London, United Kingdom, 09/27/2007 - Chris Goodin, Principal Leader Retail Pricing & Profitability Management Practice for Deloitte Consulting to speak about The Future of Retail Pricing - Deloitte Consulting, Willard Bishop, DemandTec, KSS, SAP and Connect3.
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As more and more retailers adopt and implement pricing tools to boost their bottom line, merchandising and marketing capabilities are to converge further in retail and pricing decisions are to be centered more.
Chris Goodin, Principal Leader Retail Pricing & Profitability Management Practice for Deloitte Consulting and speaker at the 4th annual Retail Pricing Summit foresees an increase in effort by retailers to develop more customer focused pricing strategies; “While the success Retailers have had and continue to have with these [pricing] tools is receiving considerable attention, the reality is that this space is still in its infancy within Retail. I believe we will see the space continue to penetrate all verticals within the Retail landscape and moving from the pioneers to the laggards.
Goodin adds, “I also believe that we will see a stronger push to developing customer focused pricing strategies that can be supported and measured at a granular level”
Jon Hauptman, Partner of Willard Bishop Consulting and Chairman of the 4th annual Retail Pricing Summit, taking place 3-4 October in Orlando shares his thoughts on the future of retail pricing and the additional focus on promotional pricing; “I expect to see more retailers of all sizes continue to evaluate, adopt and implement sophisticated price management and price optimization tools in an effort to maintain a competitive price image while remaining profitable. I also expect wholesalers and independent retailer cooperative organizations implement pricing tools and take a more proactive approach to offering their customers/members direct price-setting support”
Hauptman continues, “Additionally, I expect to see retailers more closely analyze the impact of their promotional pricing, determine which categories and segments benefit from deep promotional discounts (increase sales over the base business)…and which do not, and fine-tune their promotional strategies accordingly.”
The future of retail pricing perceived by solution providers is no different to that of leading service providers in the space.
Indeed, Marc Dietz, VP of Product Marketing for DemandTec describes where he feels the market is now and going next; “As merchandising and marketing capabilities further converge in retail, we’ll see pricing and promotion decisions become more and more consumer-centric. With one tag on the shelf, I don’t mean one-to-one pricing, of course, but retailers can optimize prices and price zones based on an understanding of the different segments of customers shopping various stores. And for promotions and loyalty programs, there are many untapped opportunities to optimize the items to promote to different customers, at what time, using which merchandising or marketing tactics, and at what price point”
Whilst Bob Phinney, VP Strategic Pricing for KSS builds upon Dietz’s prediction and sheds light on increased insight into data; “The market for pricing tools is growing rapidly as more and more retailers either are already engaged in a pricing software project or are planning one. Moving forward, I see additional tools, workbenches, actionable alerts etc all working together to give the user tremendous insight into data. Insight they have never had before.”
The prediction of a shift towards a complete business platform pricing solution is one shared by Neale Wayne, Vice President - Retail Business Development for SAP - “The market is transforming from a single point solution focus to a business platform. Pricing should be integrated into your merchandising systems, data systems and reporting systems. Managing and deploying separate systems multiplies your software and hardware footprint making it more expensive and complex to implement and maintain.”
Margaret Byrne VP Marketing & Business Development of Connect3 concludes; “Pricing tools today are more about price analytics - let’s learn what systems can tell us and build a corporate pricing plan. -These plans too often fail to recognize promotion price and its influence on everyday price response. The future will allow for retailers to operationally set pricing based upon optimal business objectives. This will require time and trust.
Goodin, Hauptman, Dietz, Sarnevitz, Wayne and Byrne are all confirmed participants at the 4th annual Retail Pricing Summit taking place in Orlando, October 3-4. The meeting is a purely retail focused event that will zone into every element of a profitable pricing strategy.
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