Whitman to host lecture on marketing, pricing strategies

Thursday, February 21, 2008, By News Staff

Whitman to host lecture on marketing, pricing strategiesFebruary 21, 2008Amy Schmitzaemehrin@syr.edu

Have you ever wanted to subscribe to HBO but not CNN? Or have you ever wanted to buy a TV, DVD player and stereo system all in one instead of separately? Component shopping is often a confusing place for consumers to tread — and marketers faced with selling components may be forced to resort to alternative pricing strategies, such as encouraging the consumer to buy each component separately, or together, or both. But what if consumers are uncertain whether or not a component is useful or necessary?

This and related questions will be explored by Amiya Basu, professor of marketing in the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, in the presentation “Impact of Customer Knowledge Heterogeneity on Bundling Strategy” on Wednesday, Feb. 27, at 11 a.m. in Room 525 of the Whitman School building. The lecture, which is part of the Whitman Colloquium lecture series, is free and open to SU faculty, staff and students.

Basu’s study, coauthored with Padmal Vitharana, associate professor of management information systems in the Whitman School, assumes that customers vary in their knowledge of components and that three factors determine the best pricing strategy for components: the marginal cost of components, the distribution of knowledge over the customer population and the relative sizes of customer segments where each segment is interested in the same set of components.

For additional information, contact Shannon Hiemstra at (315) 443-3549 or srhiemst@syr.edu.