Hantering av prisstrategier inom detaljhandeln

Sammanfattning: As an essential part of the business model, companies design different pricing strategies to optimize and customize their value capturing. Studies have previously explored how this is managed, but are often limited to food retailers and have consequently left a gap for how pricing strategies in are managed in other trade sectors. The purpose of this study is therefore to investigate and expand the understanding of how pricing strategies are managed retail companies. The purpose has been answered by two research questions; (1) What organizational goals and guidelines affect a company's pricing strategies, and why and how do they have an impact? (2) What factors affect price sensitivity and how do these affect the development of an appropriate pricing strategy? The study adopted an abductive research approach and was conducted as a case study in which one company was studied. In the case study, both qualitative and quantitative data was collected through interviews and store tests, where the interviews intended to answer RQ 1 and the store tests RQ 2. Furthermore, the study has also been filtered through the contingency theory to investigate whether there is an optimal way to design pricing strategies or whether they are dependent on different contexts. The result of the study highlights the importance of retail companies to match their internal and external situations, as well as addressing customers' price sensitivity in order to streamline the management and development of their pricing strategies. Theoretically, the study contributes to the notion that there is not one a proper way to manage pricing strategies, and that governance depends on the interaction between internal and external situations, which also reinforces the significance of the contingency theory. The study also shows that cost-based pricing strategies in line with previous studies are the dominant pricing strategy. Furthermore, the claim that it is difficult to measure and understand customer value data is contradicted. Finally, it also appears that the way companies in the clothing and sports industry manage price reductions correspond with other retail companies; on intuition, with untested assumptions, and that decisions lack empirical evidence. Practically, the study highlights the importance for companies to understand their own situation in order to allow for adaptation to their contextual situations by taking customers price sensitivity into account. Furthermore, the study also contributes with the insight that customers price sensitivity varies depending on a number of product-specific factors and that price sensitivity varies geographically.