Merchants can complete the pricing of a single commodity according to the pricing process described in this section, and repeat this process to establish the price system of their own commodities, and finally determine the dynamic adjustment mechanism according to the market life cycle and other factors. Of course, due to the complexity of pricing, my country’s cross-border e-commerce enterprises currently mainly use the benchmarking method to complete pricing, and the phenomenon of “brain-shot” pricing is extremely common, which greatly reduces the cost of pricing decisions. But we should recognize that in the era of brand going overseas, professional pricing is a bottleneck that must be broken through.
Based on the above basic knowledge, merchants can complete the pricing of a single commodity according to the pricing process described in this section, and repeat this process to establish the price system of their own commodities, and finally determine the dynamic adjustment mechanism according to the market life cycle and other factors. Of course, due to the complexity of pricing, my country’s cross-border e-commerce enterprises currently mainly use the benchmarking method to complete pricing, and the phenomenon of “brain-shot” pricing is extremely common, which greatly reduces the cost of pricing decisions. But we should recognize that in the era of brand going overseas, professional pricing is a bottleneck that must be broken through.
Sometimes, the life cycle of cross-border e-commerce products is very short, and the rigorous classic pricing process has high capital and time costs, which cannot meet the rapid pricing needs of most cross-border e-commerce products. Therefore, the industry often uses benchmarking to complete product rapid pricing, which can be generally divided into three types: arithmetic mean benchmarking, psychological median benchmarking, and competitive product benchmarking. (1) Arithmetic mean benchmarking, that is, searching for all suppliers of the same product, calculating the arithmetic mean of reasonable pricing data, and pricing and selling according to the mean.
(2) Psychological median benchmarking, that is, using the formula mentioned above
Pricing = low price + (high price – low price) x0.618
to determine product pricing.
(3) Competitive product benchmarking, that is, closely tracking the price of a certain competitor and adjusting the price at any time according to the competitor’s price.
Precautions for applying the rapid pricing process:
(1) The rapid pricing process defaults to a competition-based pricing method. When there are not enough homogeneous competitive products, the pricing accuracy will be discounted. Therefore, this method is more suitable for cross-border B2C, but it can also be used for cross-border B2B. For example, competitive product benchmarking is the main pricing method under the B2C hot-selling strategy.
(2) The rationality of the psychological median benchmarking pricing formula itself needs to be verified, and its operability in practice is problematic. Interested readers can summarize it by themselves.
(3) Although the rapid pricing process is a pricing method based on competition, it is also necessary to understand the product cost in the application, that is, to participate in competition under the premise of breaking even. Therefore, cost accounting is the basis of various pricing strategies.
(4) In practice, on the basis of the three benchmarking methods, it is usually adjusted once according to the competition strategy before the final price is determined. For example, benchmarking with competitors does not mean setting the price of your own product the same as that of the competitors. It often fluctuates a little bit up and down. When it floats up, it can convey the feeling that your product is better than the competitors. When it floats down, it can convey the feeling that your product is more cost-effective than the competitors. This step is the process of using the psychological pricing strategy.
(5) After rapid pricing, the gross profit margin of the product should also be calculated. Products in the same category often have an industry average gross profit margin level. Because the gross profit margin levels of each category are different and change rapidly, this experience value can only be accumulated in operational practice, and there is no authoritative data to query. Therefore, one of the characteristics of operators is to pursue the mastery of various empirical figures.