Price. Period.

 Price is one of the most abused marketing gimmicks in modern day advertisements, but who's to blame the companies when it has worked so well. But why do companies put some much emphasis on price? Is it because of the financial markets emphasis on Revenues? Is it because of ratio analysis? Or is it because price is a measure of the companies value offering? I'd say the latter. Often times companies wrongly emphasize the price of a product because they believe their profits to be equal to the gross margin*unit sales volume. This view fails to capture the value creation beyond that of the revenue dollar and fails to see the possibilities of informing their customers of the true objective value of their product. In addition this view puts the emphasis on price and accepts price as something dictated by the market instead of the products value offering.

Price is definitely over used as a promotion method. This is because it can be easily manipulated and the results are instantaneous. In addition in some industries where the true value and costs are not easily determined margins can be so high that a company can induce a price cut and increase cumulative profits simply by Additionally decreasing price by 1% causing a 5% increase in demand. While it cuts into margins, it also removes the need to make significant marketing expenditures to induce demand while instead lowering the price to a point which the consumers would serve to gain from the transaction.