News

DCU student wins European Pricing Forum award.

13 January 2011

Eoin Healy, who graduated in November from the MBS in Marketing degree has been awarded the European Pricing Forum award. The Award is presented annually to the author of the best final paper that addresses pricing as the main subject.

The European Pricing Forum gave the following rationale for his award:

'With his thesis “Barriers to Value Based Pricing Strategies within Irish Small to Medium Sized Enterprises: A Quantitative Survey Analysis”, Eoin Healy – Dublin City University Business School – convinced our jury that he had the most complete pricing thesis of the other 6 theses that were selected. Eoin won a € 500,00 cash reward, a bundle of books worth € 75,00- a free ePP training of his choice valued at € 1.500,00- and free ePP participation for 12 months worth € 395,00.

The jury motivated their choice as following: “Very professional thesis with clear steps in study design that is straight in our core business. The methods and objectives are well formulated and the thesis has a really scientific methodology. In general the thesis gives a valuable empirical contribution to the value of pricing research.” The motivation of Eoin to dedicate his thesis to pricing topic came from the lack of time contributed to pricing during his masters in Marketing, as opposed to branding, distribution strategies or buyer behaviour. Eoin says: “ I found this odd as I had read about the power of pricing in terms of the profitability of a firm. So I begun researching the topic of pricing within academic databases and of course on the web. This is how I came to find the ePP and its pricing thesis award.” By knowing that there was a competition to enter Eoin made his definite choice to devote his thesis to pricing.

The reason why Eoin choose to provide a piece of literature for Small and Medium Sized business within Ireland, was because they make up the majority of business types within the Irish market. His study highlighted both the importance of value based pricing to them while at the same time pointed to reasons, or barriers, why they might not yet be using value based pricing strategies. Therefore Eoin says: “I felt it would be most appropriate to analyse them in the interest of the larger Irish economic context. Through research, value based pricing was picked as my strategy of choice due to the fact that it is said to result in greater profitability to the firm and it can ultimately result in a sustainable competitive advantage!”

At the finish of his thesis Eoin concluded that there is still so much to learn on pricing in the whole marketing community, but particularly also amongst the academics. They should revisit how important pricing actually is as an element of the marketing mix and spend much more time on sharing information and knowledge about it. Eoin finishes with an important conclusion: “Pricing I believe is one of the most frightful and misunderstood elements in most marketers toolbox and it is only through learning more about pricing that we will over come that fear. This I feel, is where organisations such as the EPP can help.” Speaking on the award, the Marketing Group within the Dublin City University Business School said,"We are particularly proud of Eoin's recent award from the European Pricing Forum.

Eoin joined our masters in marketing programme on graduating from the DCU BS, marketing specialism. Pricing has, in many respects, been the 'poor relation' of marketing syllabi and has taken second place to what are perceived to be more enticing areas such as advertising, branding and consumer behaviour. Eoin deserves full credit for debunking this myth by producing a stellar piece of pricing research that has now been internationally recognised for its rigour and relevance. His decision tofocus on the critical role of pricing for SME's is particularly timely given the importance of this sector for economic growth in Ireland"

Eoin's thesis was supervised by Ms. Joanne Lynch, DCU Business School.