Tham khảo tài liệu 'management accounting for decision makers 6th edition_4', kinh doanh - tiếp thị, quản trị kinh doanh phục vụ nhu cầu học tập, nghiên cứu và làm việc hiệu quả | 166 CHAPTER 5 COSTING AND PRICING IN A COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT Counting the cost plus A fairly recent study surveyed 267 large UK and Australian businesses during the period 1999 to 2002. Their findings were broadly as follows Cost plus is regarded as important in determining selling prices by most of the businesses but many businesses only use it for a small percentage of their total sales. Retailers base most of their sales prices on their costs. This is not surprising we might expect that retailers add a mark-up on their cost prices to arrive at selling prices. Retailers and service businesses both financial services and others attach more importance to cost-plus pricing than do manufacturers and others. Cost-plus pricing tends to be more important in industries where competition is most intense. This is perhaps surprising because we might have expected less price makers in more competitive markets. The extent of the importance of cost-plus pricing seems to have nothing to do with the size of the business. We might have imagined that larger businesses would have more power in the market and be more likely to be price makers but the evidence does not support this. The reason could be that many larger businesses are in effect groups of smaller businesses. These smaller subsidiaries may not be bigger players in their markets than are small independent businesses. Also cost-plus pricing tends to be particularly important in retailing and service businesses where many businesses are quite small. Source Guilding C. Drury C. and Tayles M. An empirical investigation of the importance of cost-plus pricing Management Auditing Journal Vol. 20 No. 2 2005. Pricing on the basis of relevant marginal cost The relevant marginal cost approach deduces the minimum price for which the business can offer the product for sale. This minimum price will leave the business better off as a result of making the sale than it would have been had it pursued the next best opportunity. We .
