Chapter 10

The Hinge of Fate: Pricing Strategy

History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.

WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

Many writings on price strategy focus exclusively on relative market power among competitors. While immediate market power is indeed very important, there are a few other factors that can strongly influence results. One of them is time: if you lack market power, you are likely to need some time to accomplish your goals. Time and power are the primary commodities required to construct a pricing strategy.

Why time? The primary reason is that market power changes over time, and the strategy rule is to take price at a time and in a market when and where your customer or competitor is least ready to fight you on it. When we say ...

Get Contextual Pricing: The Death of List Price and the New Market Reality now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.