Managerial Economics Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Managerial Economics - Research Paper Example Often, the patient needs to adjust with the hearing aids and usually it takes quite a long time failing the endurance of the patient. Social stigma is also a reason for the people not to use the hearing aids as they are likely to be tagged as old and not-so-smart people in the society. It is general perception that price is a chief attribute to penetrate the market but often it is not true for several reasons as has been found in the case of hearing aids too. Price becomes important when consumers view two or more competitive products fulfilling their needs in equal terms. When product differs in their attributes and users see one of them clearly fulfilling their needs in all respects, price becomes a secondary issue. Often, people pay higher prices for a product that meets their needs in clear terms – establishing superiority over competitive products. Amiani (2007) has explored the various attributes that measure elasticity of demand for a product or service. Demand is said to be elastic when total revenue decreases on raising the product price. In contrast, the demand is said to be inelastic when total revenue increases on raising the product price. Some of the attributes, which can decide about elasticity of demand for the hearing aids, can be described as per the following. Hearing aid is an important product, which must have unique features to satisfy the customer needs. Unfortunately, most of the hearing aids available in the market fail to satisfy the customer needs. Hearing aids are in the market since several decades yet consumer perceptions on this product have not changed. Hearing aids are not perceived to be user friendly at the first place. This is one of the major causes for not an appreciable change in the user perception in last several decades. That is to say till date hearing aids suffer from inelastic demand of the market. Hearing aid technology is not yet matured enough so that consumer can differentiate among the products and its at tributes. In other reason, hearing aids require a considerable investment for the patient as it falls out of insurance coverage. Hearing aid yet does not have any substitute in a real sense making it inelastic to the market demand. Amiani (2007) asserts from the past research of ‘Lee and Lotz’ as well as ‘Kochkin’ that hearing aids do not exhibit high elasticity of demand and the reasons are many and varied as mentioned earlier. From this perspective, it makes no sense to reduce the price to increase the revenue of the firm. On the contrary, any such attempt may bring down the revenue of the company. Question: Evaluate different possible strategies that companies could implement to gain a sound position among their competitors in this hearing aids market. Use relevant theoretical concepts discussed in chapters. Answer: Revenue is a function of product price and the corresponding sale in numbers. Any marketer would be interested to increase the revenue and t hereby the profit of the firm. Amlai (2007) has already demonstrated that hearing aids are price inelastic to their demand. Given inelastic nature of demand, as in the case of hearing aids, any reduction in price does not come with corresponding increase in the sale of the product. Marketer needs to explore some other means to expand the market. Currently, only 23.6 percent of the people use hearing aids of the total potential that makes up to 31 million. Even one percent expansion of the total pote