• The “Aspiration Gap”: The overarching finding is a significant discrepancy between the perceived importance of pricing and actual execution. While the vast majority of retailers consider pricing a top strategic priority, very few are satisfied with their current pricing processes, systems, and overall maturity level.

• Fragmented Responsibilities: Organizational structures for pricing are often unclear. Responsibility is frequently split between purchasing (focusing on margins) and marketing/sales (focusing on revenue/turnover), leading to conflicting goals and a lack of a unified strategy. Dedicated centralized pricing departments are rare.

• Continued Dominance of Excel: despite increasing complexity, Microsoft Excel remains the primary tool for pricing activities for nearly two-thirds of the surveyed retailers. Professional, specialized software solutions for price optimization and management are surprisingly underutilized.

• Rudimentary Methodologies: Pricing decisions are often based on simplistic methods like cost-plus calculation or basic competitor orientation. More sophisticated, data-driven approaches that consider demand elasticity or customer value are not widely adopted.

• Dynamic Pricing is Mostly Hype (at the time): While “Dynamic Pricing” was identified as a major trend, actual implementation was found to be very low. Most retailers were only at the stage of observing the trend or running initial pilots, often hindered by technical limitations and concerns about customer perception.

• Key Barriers to Success: The main obstacles preventing better pricing management are cited as poor data quality, outdated IT infrastructure, and a lack of specialized internal know-how and resources.

The study can be downloaded here: Studie Preismanagement (in German)