Strategic pricing in business relationships - do not miss the opportunity to create value for the customers

Pricing of products and services is a complex task for industrial marketing practitioners. The failure to understand the connection between business strategy and the pricing decision at the level of industrial products and services may lead to lost business opportunities and unsatisfied customers. In this article, the importance of strategic pricing in business relationships is discussed by examining the effects of business strategy, business model and service model on pricing in order to make industrial pricing strategy and its implementation successful. The empirical study was conducted within knowledge and service intensive companies. The four cases emphasise that a well-defined business strategy actually limits the number of eligible business, service and pricing options. In the case companies, a misfit between business strategy, business model, service model and pricing prevented of them fully creating value for the customers.