PRICING STRATEGIES

There are pricing theories based on the profit maximization hypothesis. Firms follow a variety of pricing rules and methods other than the marginal rule depending on the conditions they face. Here we discuss some important pricing strategies and pricing practices.

BALANCE OF PAYMENTS

The balance of payments is a record of one country's trade dealings with the rest of the world. It aims to provide an account of all receipts and payments on account of goods residents of the country export, render services and receive capital and residents of the country import goods, receive services d and transfer capital.

The balance of payments is usually divided into two sections:

1.  The current account that deal with international trade in goods and services;

2.  Transactions in assets and liabilities which deals with overseas flows of money from international investments and loans; 

METHODS OF MEASURING NATIONAL INCOME

There are three angles through which people perform economic activities, earn their living, produce goods and services and distribute the national products.

(1)     The national economy is viewed as an aggregate of producing units combining different sectors.

(2)     The entire national economy is considered as a combination of individuals and households having several factors of production.

(3)     The national economy may also be viewed as an aggregate of consumers, money savers and total investments.  

CONCEPTS OF MANAGERIAL ECONMICS

There are certain  concepts which are significant in Managerial Economics.

Incremental Reasoning

The concept of incremental reasoning involves estimating the impact of a decision alternative on cost and revenues, emphasizing the change in total cost and total revenue resulting from variations in products, prices, procedures, investments or whatever at stake in the decision. Incremental cost and incremental revenue are the two basic components of incremental reasoning. Incremental cost or incremental revenue is the variation in total cost due to a particular decision. 

MANAGERIAL ECONOMICS AND OTHER DISCIPLINES

Managerial Economics is essentially the study of the application of economic tools and techniques to the economic analysis of business problems. In addition to Economics, there are, however, certain other disciplines from which economic analysis draws its tools. The most important of them are Management theory, Theory of Decision-making, Mathematics, Statistics, Accounting, Computer Science, and Operations Research.

MEASURES OF NATIONAL INCOME

The commonly discussed measures of national income are Gross National Product, Gross Domestic Product,  Net National Product,  Personal Income, Disposable Income and Real Income

NATIONAL INCOME

 The national income of a nation is the value of the contribution through the production units in the country and abroad. It is, thus the flow of net final goods and services resulting from the production activities of the normal residents of a country during the year. National Income is the sum total of all the goods and services produced in a country in a period of one year. The level of national income determines the level of aggregate demand for goods and services. National Income is the sum of factor income earned by the normal residents of a country in the form of remuneration to the factors of production in an accounting year. 

REPORT PREPARATION

 Report preparation and presentation constitutes the final step in marketing research preceded by defining the problem, approach development, formulation of the research design, fieldwork and data preparation and analysis. 

SELECTING PEOPLE

Selecting right people for jobs and positioning them in right places plays an important function in deciding whether they are giving their best performance to the organization. Selection strategies perform a vital role in new organizations and in fast expanding organizations. The proper selection of the new entrants ensures to build a desirable culture and establish norms in the organization. If the organization has had a fairly long history, and it has smaller intake, it may be a complex task to influence the organizational culture. However, the culture y prevalent in the organization would influence the new entrants’ orientation in spite of very careful selection

A efficient and effective system of selection and placement assists to achieve the following objectives:

• The employees feel satisfaction that the organization is properly utilizing their capabilities. This feeling raise the morale among employees result in higher levels of commitment and 
  productivity.
• The department or units within an organization get supply of the right type of people in a short period of time. Such prompt action boosts up the morale of the departments as the needs of the 
  units or department are being heeded to more promptly. 
• Minimizes the wastage of human talent, through providing opportunities for people to apply their capabilities.
• This provides existing employees opportunities to work on jobs that they prefer and are capable of performing and minimizes the wastage of human talent. This also encourages the 
  commitment of employees to a high level.
• The proper system of selection makes available data about all employees and their capabilities to facilitate human resource administration.         

One inappropriate person chosen for a given job or one improper placement can create a number of issues in an organization. The significance of selection and placement enhances as one move up the managerial ladder. An inappropriate person selected to conduct a higher managerial position can hinder the functioning of other departments and managers. If he is not fit to discharge the responsibilities assigned, he may become a drag on the organization and a source of frustration for his colleagues, and once a feeling of frustration sets in, it is likely to cause problems later. An organization should, therefore, ensure that suitable people are recruited even if it involves some investment.

Making a match between the man and his job involves the following:   

•    The person occupying a particular role, job or position has the technical, managerial and other capabilities needed to perform the functions connected with that job
• If he does not possess some of them, he has at least the potential to develop them within a reasonable period and the organization is willing to invest in his development.
• The person has an opportunity to acquire new capabilities and also apply his capabilities in performing the functions assigned to him and does not have feeling of his talents being wasted i.e., the organization is capable of absorbing the development of capabilities of its members through its own growth and change.

This consist the following activities on the part of the organization:

• Prepare an exhaustive list of jobs and job linkages.
• Prepare an exhaustive list of functions or operation associated with each job.
• Listing the capabilities (knowledge, skills, attitudes or values) needed to perform each function in mutually exclusive categories as far as possible. These capabilities may be certain
• Make a list of the indicators for each of these capabilities in the form of degree earned, courses attended, training programs attended, work experience, performance in tests, observed behaviour, previous job records, accomplishments etc
• Determining the ways of assessing the capabilities through the indicators generated.
• Actual selection beginning with making the job opportunities known to all potential applicants, shortlist candidates  by screening the applications, determining their potential through test and other similar selection procedures.
• Final selection and placement.

An efficient and effective selection system generates enough of information about a candidate. Such information pertains not merely to his capabilities to perform functions associated with the immediate job but also with his potential to perform higher level functions in future. This needs some understanding of career ladders for different roles/role occupants. However, most selection systems handle immediate needs of an organization Because of lack of foresight and planning, organizations create issues of stagnation and frustration among employees which could be reduced by a carefully planned and executed selection system.

HOW TO DEAL WITH PEOPLE?

The most important aspect in acquiring skills to deal with people is to properly understand individuals and their basic nature. Human nature means the distinctive characteristics that include ways of thinking, feeling and acting, that human have naturally, free of the influence of culture.

MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS

Multivariate analysis refers to those statistical techniques employed to analyze data consisting of observations relating to a reality involving two or more variables. It is a usual form used to categorize a group of analytic methods whose major characteristic is the simultaneous analysis of independent variable and dependent variables. Thus, if an analysis considers, for instance, four independent variables and two dependent variables treated simultaneously, it is known as a multivariate analysis. Of all methods of analysis, multivariate techniques are the most powerful and appropriate for behavioral and educational research. Multivariate methods are largely logical extensions of uni-variate techniques.

Multivariate analysis is mostly applied for:

• Marketing research
• Consumer  Research
• Process control
• Research and development
• Quality control
• Quality assurance across  different industries
• Process optimization and

Multivariate Analysis can assist in:

• In Identifying relationships between a metric-scaled dependent variable and one or more categorical (nominal or ordinal) independent variables (ANOVA) The basic principle underlying the technique is that the total variation in the dependent variable is divided into two parts- one, variation attributed to some specific causes (known as variation between samples) and the other attributed to chance called as (variation within samples
• Factor analysis is a multivariate statistical technique which makes no distinction between dependent and independent variables. The factor analysis analyses all variables under investigation in order to extract the underlined factors explaining most part of the variations of the original set of data.
• Multivariate analysis is used to predict group membership and classify objects into one of the alternative groups on the basis of a set of predictor variables. The dependent variable in discriminant analysis is categorical and on a nominal scale, whereas the predictor variables are either internal or ratio scale in nature. When we have two categories of dependent variable, we have two group discriminant analyses and when there are more than two groups, it involves multiple discriminant analysis. 

 Techniques of Multivariate Analysis:

Among different, multivariate tools available, SPSS is a comprehensive and flexible statistical analysis and data management solution. It can take data from almost any type of file and use them to generate tabulated reports, charts, and plots of distributions and trends, descriptive statistics, and conduct complex statistical analyses.

UNIVARIATE ANALYSIS

Uni variate analysis is a single-variable analysis.  In a questionnaire-based marketing research project, each question often represents a variable under study.    Simple tabulation involving single variable constitutes uni variate analysis. In most marketing research applications, a survey of some sort is the method used, whether it is conducted through mail, a personal interview, over the phone or more recently, on the Internet.  There are however, other classes of study available, one of which is observation.  The other widely used class of study is known as experimentations.  Just like in a laboratory, we manipulate certain variables (usually marketing related ones in marketing research), and observe changes in other variables (for example: sales, or consumer behavior, or attitude) 

NON-PARAMETRIC TESTS

 Non-parametric tests are used when the independent variables are non-metric.  Like parametric tests, nonparametric tests are available for testing variables from one sample, two independent samples or two related samples.

PARAMETRIC TESTS

Parametric test provide inferences for making statements about the means of parent populations.  A t test is often used for this purpose.  This test is based on the Student’s t statistic. 

 The t statistic assumes that the variable is normally distributed and the mean is known (or assume to be known) and the population variance is estimated from the sample.  An assumption about the normal distribution of the random variable is made with mean m and unknown population variance s2, which is estimated by the sample variance s2.

HYPOTHESIS TESTING

Generally, all research projects are started with in-depth interviews of the business heads generating hypotheses about the topic being researched.  At the end of this meeting, it’s usually important to stress with the business heads that these are just hypotheses that need to be validated with research.  The reason is that often these hypotheses are viewed to be facts without any evidence to support them – corporate assumptions.  The fact the business leaders articulated them can further engrain their beliefs. It may seem obvious, but other benefits of involving the business leaders in the early hypothesis generation phase are to:

DATA ANALYSIS

Analysis of data refers to seeing the data in the light of hypotheses or research problems and the prevailing theories and inferring conclusions amenable to theory as possible. In data analysis, we combine together number of questions thereby creating in new variable and analyze the interdependence between questions, variable and goals e.g. How new students select universities for new admissions?  

IMPACT OF PERSUASION AND TECHNOLOGY

Customers select banks on the basis of internal persuasion, external persuasion and technology. In order to attract and retain customers for a longer time, the banks pay attention on their priorities of customers. Purpose of the study was to examine the impact of persuasion and technology on the selection and usage of banks by the customers. The study concluded that banks significantly differ in persuasion and technology. Some banks emphasize more on external persuasion while others stress more on internal persuasion. others emphasize more on external persuasion and technology. The study revealed that technology and external persuasion have a significant impact on the customers’ selection of banks and the usage of banking products and services by the customers.

 Keywords: Bank customers, internal persuasion, external persuasion, technology, selection, bank usage.
Full text of the paper can be visited at 

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