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Category Archives: Chapter 14: Pricing Concepts for Establishing Value

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Get on the Bus, Gus—for a Luxury Ride!

04 Saturday Feb 2023

Posted by grewallevymarketingnews in Chapter 13: Services: The Intangible Product, Chapter 14: Pricing Concepts for Establishing Value

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Jet, Luxury bus, Napaway

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The United States is not, historically, a bus-loving country. Its individualistic consumers love having their own cars, or at least …

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Paying More or Less for Pizza, Depending on the Time of Day: Can Dynamic Pricing Work for Restaurants?

24 Tuesday Jan 2023

Posted by grewallevymarketingnews in Chapter 10: Marketing Research, Chapter 14: Pricing Concepts for Establishing Value

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Dynamic Pricing, Marketing Research, Pricing Concepts for Establishing Value, restaurants

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Late at night, after a concert or party or other social event, have you ever thought to yourself, “I would …

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Blame the Government for You Not Getting Your Taylor Swift Tickets

05 Thursday Jan 2023

Posted by grewallevymarketingnews in Chapter 05: Analyzing the Marketing Environment, Chapter 14: Pricing Concepts for Establishing Value

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Live Nation, merger, Ticketmaster

When companies merge, leaving a mega-corporation with no competitors, consumers suffer. The most recent example of this general capitalist truism comes in the form of fallout from the federal government allowing Live Nation and Ticketmaster to merge in 2010. What fallout, you ask? Ask anyone who recently tried to get a ticket to see Taylor Swift live. Not only were there not enough tickets to go around, but the Ticketmaster website was, to put it kindly, a freaking mess, with glitches, bugs, error messages, and hours-long wait times for ticket purchases to go through.

Columnist Binyamin Appelbaum traces the Taylor Swift debacle to the government’s tendency to be too credulous when companies promise that their merger will not be detrimental for customers. In 2010, for example, the Justice Department released a press release in which it confidently asserted that Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s merger would “protect competition for primary ticketing” and “maintain incentives for innovation and discounting”—none of which has come to pass. Instead, a nearly universal view reflects widespread agreement that Ticketmaster’s virtual monopoly in the concert ticket arena led to Swift-gate.

It is not the only example though. Various Department of Justice–approved mergers have allowed for and led to monopolies, which in turn produced negative outcomes such as stifled innovation, laziness on the part of the now-insulated companies, and consumers who are worse off. When the DOJ allowed T-Mobile to acquire Sprint in 2019, it produced less competition when it comes to the price of mobile services. When Dollar Tree acquired rival Family Dollar in 2015, the DOJ required the two companies to divest themselves of more than 300 stores and create another, competing company—Dollar Express—which then went bankrupt within two years, having allegedly been pushed out of business by market-dominant Dollar Tree’s predatory practices.

Applebaum asks why the government “didn’t just prevent Dollar Tree from buying Family Dollar” in the first place. Of course, even with an answer to that question, it would be too late to go back in time and fix the mistake. But in the last couple of years, perhaps learning from its experience, the federal government seemingly has been exercising deeper scrutiny of proposed mergers. For example, the DOJ recently successfully blocked book publisher Penguin Random House from buying its rival publisher Simon & Schuster.

In light of the Taylor Swift ticket disaster, the Department of Justice also has opened an antitrust investigation into Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation. It may be too late to see Taylor Swift live this time, but thinking ahead to the next tour, you just might be able to score some tickets.

Discussion Questions:

  1. How can consumers be harmed when companies merge?
  2. In what circumstances should the government prevent companies from merging on antitrust grounds?
  3. Do you think it would have been easier and less glitchy to buy Taylor Swift tickets, had the government not allowed Live Nation to buy Ticketmaster in 2010?

Sources: Binyamin Appelbaum, “Overconfident Regulators Caused the Ticketmaster Mess,” The New York Times, November 23, 2022; “Justice Department Requires Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc. to Make Significant Changes to Its Merger with Live Nation Inc.,” justice.gov, January 25, 2010; Alex Abad-Santos, “How Disappointed Taylor Swift Fans Explain Ticketmaster’s Monopoly,” Vox, November 21, 2022; David McCabe and Ben Sisario, “Justice Dept. Is Said to Investigate Ticketmaster’s Parent Company,” The New York Times, November 18, 2022; Winston Cho, “Fear for Your Megamergers: The Justice Dept. Is (Finally) Taking Action,” The Hollywood Reporter, November 19, 2022

Photo by Chaz McGregor on Unsplash

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Procter & Gamble Learns that Its Business Isn’t Quite as Inflation-Proof as It Thought

10 Monday Oct 2022

Posted by grewallevymarketingnews in Chapter 14: Pricing Concepts for Establishing Value

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p&g, Pricing Concepts

Procter & Gamble sure sounded confident in the face of a tough economy for a while there. Back in January …

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Adding to Global Oil Price Pressures, But Maybe Not in the Way You Think: The Worldwide Implications of Indonesia’s Palm Oil Export Ban

04 Wednesday May 2022

Posted by grewallevymarketingnews in Chapter 08: Global Marketing, Chapter 14: Pricing Concepts for Establishing Value

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global marketing, Palm oil, Pricing Concepts

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Affordable cooking oil (e.g., sunflower, soy, canola, palm) is really beneficial for consumers in countries that love fried foods (e.g., …

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How Will Retailers Pass Inflation-Related Price Increases Along to Customers? Let Us Count the Ways

27 Wednesday Apr 2022

Posted by grewallevymarketingnews in Chapter 05: Analyzing the Marketing Environment, Chapter 14: Pricing Concepts for Establishing Value

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Inflation, Marketing Environment, Pricing Concepts

Price hikes might not raise any eyebrows—or tighten any belts, really—when the economy is healthy, or when stimulus checks are …

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No Snow? S’no Problem. Tourists Are Heading to Ski Towns in the Summer

19 Thursday Aug 2021

Posted by grewallevymarketingnews in Chapter 06: Consumer Behavior, Chapter 14: Pricing Concepts for Establishing Value

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consumer behavior, Pricing Concepts, Ski Mountains

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Forget the beach. This summer, tourists are heading to ski towns. A mix of pent-up post-pandemic demand, good marketing, a …

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The Wealth Gap, Illustrated by Purchasing and Pricing Trends During the Pandemic

14 Friday May 2021

Posted by grewallevymarketingnews in Chapter 14: Pricing Concepts for Establishing Value

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COVID-19, Pricing Concepts, Wealth Gap

Even with all the resources in the world, there were some things that wealthy people could not access during the …

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A Foot Soldier in the Ongoing Chicken Wars

01 Tuesday Sep 2020

Posted by grewallevymarketingnews in Chapter 12: Developing New Products, Chapter 14: Pricing Concepts for Establishing Value

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Developing New Products, Pricing Concepts, Wendys

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There was a time, in late 2019, when the phrase “chicken wars” was being used widely, and it had nothing …

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A Flex on the Wrist: Rap Brags that Might Promote Luxury Watch Brands

04 Monday Feb 2019

Posted by Grewal Levy Marketing in Chapter 14: Pricing Concepts for Establishing Value, Chapter 18: Integrated Marketing Communications

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advertising, establishing value, luxury brands, music

The number of musicians singing about the timepieces they sport on their wrists continues to grow, especially in the rap …

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Archived Articles by Chapter

  • Chapter 01: Overview of Marketing (76)
  • Chapter 02: Developing Marketing Strategies (135)
  • Chapter 03: Social and Mobile Marketing (159)
  • Chapter 04: Conscious Marketing, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Ethics (156)
  • Chapter 05: Analyzing the Marketing Environment (221)
  • Chapter 06: Consumer Behavior (179)
  • Chapter 07: Business-to-Business Marketing (84)
  • Chapter 08: Global Marketing (117)
  • Chapter 09: Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning (147)
  • Chapter 10: Marketing Research (98)
  • Chapter 11: Product Branding and Packaging Decisions (203)
  • Chapter 12: Developing New Products (179)
  • Chapter 13: Services: The Intangible Product (145)
  • Chapter 14: Pricing Concepts for Establishing Value (97)
  • Chapter 15: Strategic Pricing Concepts (92)
  • Chapter 16: Supply Chain Management (111)
  • Chapter 17: Retailing and Multichannel Marketing (204)
  • Chapter 18: Integrated Marketing Communications (162)
  • Chapter 19: Advertising, Public Relations and Sales Promotions (189)
  • Chapter 20: Personal Selling and Sales Management (56)
  • Marketing Tidbits (32)
  • Uncategorized (15)

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