Quick Consultant: Pricing & Productivity Ratios Show Positive Signs

The final study will feature average, median and “high-low” prices for more than 100 different products, services, and quantities, including pricing for digital color printing, digital black-and-white printing, 1-C and 2-C offset printing. Also covered in this study are basic bindery services for both standard offset products and digital color printing, offset press rates for eight different presses, and markup practices for both paper and outside (brokered) services.

Pricing Practices 1993 – 2011

We have been tracking pricing practices for dozens of common services and products since the early 1990’s. Interestingly enough, pricing practices and increases on those products vary, based upon the specific product or service.

As an example, prices have increased at a rate of 5.9% every two years for NCR, but owners have been conservative or cautious when it comes to DTP charges. In the prepress department, the average price increase every two years has been only 3.4%.

If you want to survive and prosper in this industry it is critical that you monitor the pricing practices of your peers. It is also important to look at the prices being charged for individual products and services, not just a select few. If your costs are slowly increasing, especially for labor and materials, you must address the issue of pricing, even at the risk of losing some customers.

If you wonder how you are supposed to find and quantify this type of information, ordering the new pricing study would be a great place to start.

Senior contributing columnist John Stewart is president of Q.P. Consulting Inc. Contact him at 2110 S. Dairy Road, West Melbourne, FL 32904, call 321-727-2444, email qkconsult@aol.com. Be sure to check out John’s blog on his website at www.quickconsultant.com.