The master thesis focuses at the pricing process of FCL shipments between Europe and Asia. After the general process description of internal processes there are shown two concrete examples, one under EXW condition and the other one under DAP condition. At the same time the thesis present also the railway connection between Asia and Europe as a certain alternative to the maritime and airfreight transportation under some condition.

In today’s world, change is faster than ever with rapid technological development and increasing global competition. The effects of globalization have led to more intense international competition when competitors originate from different parts of the world. Thanks to the use of new information technology, transparency has increased and made it possible for customers to compare products and prices between suppliers and prices in different markets and also buy cross-border. This puts pressure on companies to differentiate and develop their competitive advantage. Pricing could be such an advantage. Organizations need to develop pricing strategies well adapted to meet these external changes and remain profitable. Value-based pricing strategy has proven to help companies to move away from discussions about pricing and instead focus on the unique value the company’s offerings can provide the customers. This is also the pricing strategy that creates the best opportunities to maximize the profit in every sales situation. Therefore, this study has investigated how OEMs work with value-based pricing strategy and pricing processes in the context of globalization and ICT.   This has been done by conducting a case study at the company Atlas Copco in Sickla, Sweden, that is market leader within sustainable production solutions. The case study consisted of interviews with, and a questionnaire sent out to, managers at Atlas Copco, Industrial Technique, General Industry, involved in the pricing process.   The results indicate that Atlas Copco strive to work with value-based pricing and are somewhat taken into consideration global trends affecting pricing and working internally with factors affecting pricing. Furthermore, the findings suggest that in order to use value-based pricing in the context of globalization, the company should state and implement a clear pricing strategy, decentralize pricing authority, provide the sales organizations with guidelines, training and communication platforms and work to move away from commodities.   The findings of this study have implication both in a theoretical and industrial aspect. From the theoretical aspect, the findings contributes to the existing research about value-based pricing, a research area which is usually fragmented and mostly describes what value-based pricing is, not how it is used, especially not in a global context. This study contributes with a case showing how OEMs are working with value-based pricing, taking into consideration both global trends and internal factors. From the industrial aspect, the results from this study give OEMs competitive advantage through following the findings about what internal and external factors to consider when working with their pricing strategy.

This paper’s aim is to analyze value-based pricing strategies in service contracts and how they help companies generate sustainable advantages. Scoop of the analysis will be service contracts in manufacturing industry. A service contract could be defined as an intangible value proposition that includes but not limited to maintaining client’s machines continuously for a negotiated amount of time. By working with a Swedish pricing consultancy firm Navetti AB, a descriptive research was conducted in an effort to answer the research question: “How to utilize a value-based pricing strategy in service contracts?”. By trying to answer this question, authors of this paper wanted to contribute to the developing framework of value-based pricing phenomena. Results of this study indicates that certain steps need to be followed by service providers in manufacturing industry in order to utilize a value-based pricing strategy. Obscure perceived value of customers need to be realized and their value drivers need to be extracted, quantified and analyzed. Findings of this study have implications both in theoretical and industrial perspective. From industrial aspect, service providers need to communicate with their customers deeply and analyze their value drivers, they also need to take cost-based and competition-based pricing strategies into consideration while utilizing a value-based pricing strategy. From the theoretical perspective this study contributes to the field of pricing and price optimization part of industrial management.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:32:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Jefferson Assis de Faria.pdf: 2128442 bytes, checksum: 5140fbde576a07cdf1f0e836e1059565 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-08-04 / It is notorious how often and fast most of companies, in the global environment, take decision on establishing goals to achieve near perfect quality for a product or service through the implementation of better process and new tools. Six Sigma as example is one of the methodology in which the adherence has been massive and constant in the business world, however, few companies take advantage of this tool in their administrative processes, mainly speaking, in the product and services pricing process (FRANK, 2003). The heart of the matter is that many organizations use the disciplines of Six Sigma to reduce their manufacturing costs, therefore, they also can use the same tool to increase their revenue in the way to reduce losses and minimize tension on management decision process, which means, apply Six Sigma not only on manufacturing process but others (SODHI and SODHI, 2005). Facing this opportunity, hereby the main goal of this research, through the Six Sigma methodology and its new approach Six Sigma Pricing, is to perform a sales pricing process diagnosis and analysis in order to propose improvements to an automotive industry supplier. Due to some limitations to apply full DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control) steps, which is the Six Sigma (Pricing) methodology s pillars, it were only applied in this research the first three phases so-called DMA (Define, Measure, Analyse) and in the Improve phase it were done the process improvements proposals. It was firmly believed that applying these first three phases in the company pricing process was very valuable to bring out the various "flaws"/problems and their "countermeasures"/proposals for potential solution thereof. Therefore, it is understood that the practical and theoretical contributions resulted from this research proved that the methodology and its tools are powerful in all its phases to come up with potential pricing troubleshooting. / É notória a frequência e agilidade com que as empresas, no ambiente global, decidem o estabelecimento de metas para atingir níveis quase perfeitos de qualidade de seus produtos e serviços através da implantação de melhores processos e novas ferramentas. O Six Sigma é uma das metodologias cuja aderência tem sido massiva e constante nos negócios, porém, poucas companhias utilizam desta ferramenta, em seus departamentos administrativos, e principalmente no que tange ao processo de formação do preço de produtos e serviços (FRANK, 2003). O fato é que muitas organizações usam das disciplinas do Six Sigma para reduzirem seus custos de manufatura, portanto, eles também podem usar a mesma ferramenta para aumentar as suas receitas de maneira a reduzir perdas e minimizar as tensões nas decisões de negócio , ou seja, aplicar a metodologia Six Sigma em outros processos que não os de manufatura (SODHI e SODHI, 2005). Dada esta oportunidade, esta pesquisa teve como objetivo, através da metodologia Six Sigma e sua nova abordagem Six Sigma Pricing, fazer o diagnóstico e análise do processo de formação do preço de venda em um fornecedor da indústria automobilística para propor melhorias. Em função de limitações, quando da aplicação completa do DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control), pilares da metodologia Six Sigma (Pricing), foram aplicadas somente as três primeiras fases assim chamadas neste trabalho de DMA (Define, Measure, Analyze) e na fase de Improve foram feitas as propostas de melhoria para o processo. Pôde-se crer piamente que aplicar estas três primeiras fases foi de grande valia para trazer à tona os mais diversos defeitos /problemas e as suas respectivas contramedidas /propostas para solução potencial dos mesmos. Entendeu-se então que as contribuições práticas e teóricas advinda desta pesquisa prova que a metodologia e suas ferramentas são poderosas em todas as suas etapas para resolução de problemas de pricing.