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Rating: 
Summary: Pricing Strategy by Morris Engelson
Review: Business managers will benefit from this excellent text on pricing strategy. It offers simple mathematical guidelines and basic methods for establishing the price for a product or service based on a variety of factors, including peceived value, competitive landscape, and market conditions. Engelson's style is conversational yet instructional, without being overly dry and academic. For anyone in business, this is a strong "how to" guide to setting product prices.
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Summary: Practical value of the book for real-time managers
Review: I have looked at the previous book reviews, and for me they all appear to miss the mark. This is because these reviewers do not tell me all that much about the book but rather about themselves and their issues. I expect that some may see my review in the same category, but like the book says, "the final determination of value is in the mind of the buyer". I can see how the structure of this book may be considered by some not to be conducive to an academic study text. But I am not an academic and I do not need a textbook. I am a business owner and I need to analyze price and volume relationships in a practical way. I found the mathematical analysis procedures offered by this book to be of a superior quality, and the price/volume techniques particularly useful. I am giving this book a five rating because it provides the procedures and tools I need. I cannot see how someone would rate this book any lower in terms of what it provides and what it sets out to do. I wish there were some easy way to really know in advance how things would work out. This book at least makes the task that much easier with its analysis techniques and useful tools it provides.
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Summary: Lacks focus!
Review: I went ahead to buy this book even though it has some substandard reviews simply because I wasnt looking for an overly complicated academic text on pricing. I graduated with a degree in economics and even though I dont consider myself a hard core economist I really felt that this text was bare bones. The first 4 chapters go on and on about what devising strategy entails and Engelson uses such 'dumbed' down english; its almost insulting to anyone in business. The examples are too brief and lack analytical rigor. Some templates and graphs in chapter 5 were useful but whats up with a section on famous quotes? Seems like Engelson ran out of things to add to his book. This book is so short you can read it in one hour...dont waste 30 bucks on this one...go with KOTLER or Nagle
Rating:
Summary: Great for price-volume analysis
Review: It's great how many price-volume relationship variations this book provides, both in graphs, formulas and narrative. The answer to what I was looking for showed up in the "contribution to profit" section on page 191. I did have to go through the section a few times before I really understood what I was supposed to do. I wish the author had given more examples and explanations. Still it only took me about half an hour to figure it out. It was a breeze after that. I just looked up the result in the tables on page 194 and I was done. This is the right book for anybody who wants to investigate possible results on profit as the price is changed - either up or down.
A Florida Strategy Practitioner
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Summary: Excellent buy as a reference
Review: This book is a very well-organized reference book, written for busy people, and as such may complement other textbook-like treatments. The organizing 'strategy' in the book is to ensure that you don't have to wade through many paragraphs of prose to find the one piece information you're looking for - highlighting and bulleting makes the book very easy to use. Also, the many graphs are well-integrated with the text, which provides a clear "total picture" at a glance. The comprehensive list of definitions and multiple relationships and equations in the appendix also adds value, for someone looking to use the material right away. The author's abbreviated approach does leave out some useful material, so normally I'd rate the book at four stars. But for under $20, you can't go wrong with this book. It's a great basic book on pricing on its own, and can also be profitably used as a reference adjunct to other, more traditional, texts.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent buy as a reference
Review: This book is a very well-organized reference book, written for busy people, and as such may complement other textbook-like treatments. The organizing 'strategy' in the book is to ensure that you don't have to wade through many paragraphs of prose to find the one piece information you're looking for - highlighting and bulleting makes the book very easy to use. Also, the many graphs are well-integrated with the text, which provides a clear "total picture" at a glance. The comprehensive list of definitions and multiple relationships and equations in the appendix also adds value, for someone looking to use the material right away. The author's abbreviated approach does leave out some useful material, so normally I'd rate the book at four stars. But for under $20, you can't go wrong with this book. It's a great basic book on pricing on its own, and can also be profitably used as a reference adjunct to other, more traditional, texts.
Rating:
Summary: Practical value of the book for real-time managers
Review: Was my price demand curve justifiable, could I defend it. What about my 3 year forecast to manufacturing, to aggressive, to weak? My job as Product Marketing Manager was to develope a pricing strategy based on sound principles that would determine if the proposed new product would likely meet division objectives for profit and market share growth. My research for helpful books lead me to Morris Engelson's book on Pricing Strategy, the chapter dealing with demand curves for example gave me the foundation from which to build, not just hope. This book can help any product marketing manager (new or old) develope a realistic pricing strategy based on sound principles, not wishful thinking.
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