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Price and the product marketing manager

What is the importance of price? What role does the product marketing manager play? This article explores pricing by looking at Pop Sugar and Kohls.

Pricing decisions impact almost every aspect of a business—the product’s image, the company’s sales, and the retailer’s success.

What is pricing?

Pricing is a component of the marketing strategy. Covering expenses and making a profit are crucial, but pricing is also an issue of relationship to competitor’s pricing, the product’s positioning, and supply and demand—what the customer is willing to pay.

Pricing is not just about numbers.
The price of the merchandise sends a message about the perceived value of the product to customers regarding the product or service they are buying. For example, using the fast fashion business model of H&M or Zara, customers know that they will find new merchandise in the stores almost weekly, and they are confident that they can afford it.
The retailers control their price structure through spin-offs of successful products with low or nonexistent start-up expenses (e.g., pattern development, sample construction, and fit perfection), as well as production in their own factories, which saves costs.
High-end designers and brands, such as Victoria Beckham, the iconic British boot brand Hunter, and Vera Wang, have had success by introducing diffusion labels (secondary lines) at lower prices exclusively to mass merchandisers in an attempt to increase market share. These designers are offering less-expensive labels and distributing those labels through discount stores, such as Target or Kohl’s.
Popular style and trend site Popsugar built on this practice of using brand and name recognition to extend its brand to a wider audience, with a data-driven curated collection for Kohl’s.
POPSUGAR partners with Kohl’s on a mixable collection of wardrobe pieces, curated and designed based on search data from the popular site.

In some retail firms, the product marketing manager may be in charge of brand marketing; however, more companies are adding the position of brand marketing manager to focus on the importance of creating and managing the brand of the product. You’ll explore the brand marketing manager role further in the next step.

This article is from the free online

Careers in Fashion: Retail Marketing, Merchandising, and Management

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