SEMESTER: Spring 2018

COURSE NUMBER: EWMBA 269-11

COURSE TITLE: Pricing

UNITS OF CREDIT: 3 Units

INSTRUCTOR: Yuichiro Kamada

E-MAIL ADDRESS: ykamada@haas.berkeley.edu

CLASS FORMAT: 
This course is a mix of lectures, in-class experiments, case sessions, and student presentations.

Experiments are important learning opportunities, and students are required to participate in all of them. Each experiment session is followed by a lecture on the theme of the experiment, in which we discuss the result of the experiment and the theory explaining (or not explaining) it.

Students are also required to form teams of three or four, and conduct a research on the pricing strategies of the company/industry of their choice. There will be one presentation per team (an interim presentation). At the end of the semester, each team turns in a final paper that reflects comments from the audience at the interim presentation.

Cases are used to deepen understanding of theories we learn, and typically discussed after the lecture of the corresponding theory. For example, we discuss strategic pricing in a duopoly setting in one lecture, and in the next lecture we discuss the case on Playstation vs. Xbox.

REQUIRED READINGS: Cases/web articles. No textbooks are required.

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: 
The final grade will be based on group project, homework, class participation, midterm, and a take-home final.

SAMPLE SYLLABUS: bCourses Electives Forum. The syllabus contains the schedule of lectures. Contact Yuichiro at ykamada@haas.berkeley.edu for any questions about the details.

CAREER FIELD: Everyone whose work relates to pricing, or more broadly strategic thinking.

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:
Pricing is one of the least understood marketing decisions, although it is the "number one problem facing marketing." This course aims to provide a rigorous and comprehensive introduction to contemporary pricing theory and tactics. We use in-class experiments and cases to complement the theory learned in lectures. Students completing this course will be equipped with ready-to-use “tools” for pricing strategies.

Topics include: 
---analyzing sales data for optimal pricing (Can we use sales data to determine the optimal price?)
---ticket pricing (What are the optimal prices for “S seats,” “A seats,” and “B seats”?)
---freemium (What’s the true cost of freemium?)
---skim pricing vs. penetration pricing (How can we predict the future sales path?)
---strategic pricing under competition (When should you go (or not go) to a price war?)
---auctions (How can we determine the optimal bid? Which auction format is the best?)
---price negotiations (Should you say yes to an aggressive offer?)
---price matching/beating (Which strategy is better?)
---consumer search and pricing (Are search platforms your enemies?)
---health-club pricing (What if customers overestimate the frequency of coming to your gym?)
---matching problems (What if prices can't be used- as in the “marriage market”?)
---etc.  

The course has six (or more!) in-class experiments, and each experiment is followed by lecture(s) on the theory explaining and discussing the strategies used in the experiment. For example, we will conduct an experiment on auctions in various formats, and then in the following lectures we will discuss which auction formats produce more value. Students completing this course will be equipped with ready-to-use “tools” for pricing strategies.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: 
Yuichiro Kamada (PhD, Harvard) is a faculty member at Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, where he is a Barbara and Gerson Bakar Faculty Fellow.

Yuichiro conducts research in a wide range of problems in marketing, with a particular focus on pricing, strategic decision-making, social networks, and market design. His research papers on dynamic strategic decision-making and market design appear in the top academic journals. Yuichiro’s expertise is highly regarded in academia, and he has served as a referee for more than 30 academic journals. Yuichiro has presented his work at various top institutions, such as Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Chicago, and Yale. View his faculty bio here.