UTS24760 Pricing and Revenue Management
The Complete Study & Assessment Guide · Spring 2026UTS24760 Overview
- University of Technology Sydney
- Spring 2026
- Postgraduate
- Marketing
- No exam
24760 Pricing and Revenue Management is a University of Technology Sydney Business School subject taught in the Marketing discipline group and offered in Spring 2026. It covers the pricing theories, frameworks and concepts that managers use to make pricing decisions, and it clusters them into five modules across twelve weeks: the fundamentals of pricing, the three basic pricing methods, pricing a new product, price discovery methods, and pricing psychology with price bundling.
- Assessed by Portfolio 70% plus two group case reports 30%
- Hardest step Turning a calculation into a defended price
- Do first Master the break even volume change identity
- Watch the clock Case reports close at 2:00 pm Thursday
How UTS24760 is assessed
| Component | Weight | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Reflective Summary Note 1 (Modules 1 and 2) | 15% | Individual, maximum 600 words, written only about a class you attended; compulsory AI use declaration. Due 11:59 pm Wednesday 2 September in the subject schedule and 5 September 23:59 on the Canvas assignment page; work to the earlier date and confirm on Canvas. |
| Reflective Summary Note 2 (Modules 3 and 4) | 15% | Individual, maximum 600 words, same structure and rubric as Note 1. Due 11:59 pm Wednesday 7 October. |
| Final Executive Summary | 40% | Individual, 2,000 words, written as an application to a pricing or revenue management consultancy and synthesising the two notes against learning objectives SLO1 to SLO3. Due 11:59 pm Monday 2 November. |
| Case Analysis Reports (two group reports at 15% each) | 30% | Group of 3 to 4. Each report is a deck of 10 to 15 slides excluding appendices, submitted via Canvas before 2:00 pm on the Thursday the case is due, with a compulsory Model and Decision Audit slide. Marked out of 15: analysis 5, recommendations 4, presentation 2, materials 2, response to questions 2. |
What UTS24760 covers
24760 clusters its topics into five modules across twelve Spring weeks. Module 1 establishes why price is the strongest profit lever, the four pillars of the value pricing framework, the arithmetic of a price change, and how company strategy governs pricing. Module 2 walks the three basic methods: cost based, competition based and value based.
Module 3 turns to pricing a new product through acquisition spending, customer relationships and customer lifetime value. Module 4 asks how a firm can measure willingness to pay, and answers with direct and indirect discovery methods. Module 5 closes on pricing psychology and bundling. There is no exam: the mark comes from a 70% individual portfolio and two group case analysis reports worth 15% each.
Pricing as the Profit Lever
price in the marketing mix, create value vs harvest value, the 1% lever comparison, the price realization gap, measuring pricing success (Module 1, Week 1)02The Four Pillars of the Value Pricing Framework
costs as the floor, customer value as the ceiling, reference prices, the value proposition as the weighting rule, true economic value vs perceived value (Module 1, Week 1)03Price Elasticity and Margin Arithmetic
elasticity as a unit free ratio, the four elasticity bands, the break even volume change identity, auditing a price change after the fact (Module 1, Week 1 workshop)04From Company Strategy to Pricing Strategy
tactical vs strategic pricing, cost leadership, premium branding and comparative framing, the tactics each licenses, the price value map (Module 1, Week 2)05Blue Ocean Strategy and Price Positioning
red ocean vs blue ocean, structuralist vs reconstructionist, the eliminate reduce raise create grid, strategic canvas and value curves (Module 1, Week 2)06Cost and Cost Based Pricing
the profit identity, incremental vs average and avoidable vs sunk costs, semifixed costs, markup practice, the circularity that breaks cost plus (Module 2, Week 3)07Competition Based Pricing and Price Tactics
pricing lower, level or higher, price wars costed with margin arithmetic, predatory, bait, loss leader and penetration pricing (Module 2, Week 3)08Value Based Pricing Step by Step
the six implementation steps, the focal competitor, differentiators and deficiencies, economic value to the customer, value sharing and tiering (Module 2, Week 4)09Acquisition Pricing and Customer Relationships
transactional vs relational orientation, the four relationship parameters, acquisition spending, self determined vs firm determined customers (Module 3, Week 5)10Customer Lifetime Value and Break Even Analysis
retention, churn and the discount rate, finite and infinite horizon CLV, the break even period, RFM segmentation, firing and rewarding customers (Module 3, Weeks 5 to 6)11Customer Value and Willingness to Pay
functional vs hedonic benefits, the instability of customer value, value triggers, the customer value grid, unbundling a product into benefits (Module 4, Week 7)12Price Discovery: Van Westendorp and BDM
the four price sensitivity questions, IPP, PMC, PME and OPP, building the cumulative curves, the Becker DeGroot Marschak procedure, incentive compatibility (Module 4, Weeks 7 to 9)Delivery is split. Online content including recorded lectures is released each Wednesday and the weekly pre-work is a mix of readings, videos, business cases and lecture notes; face to face workshops then run fortnightly for three hours on Thursdays and are built around in-class exercises, group discussion and case presentations rather than delivery.
Some weeks carry no lecture at all, only class discussion based on the pre-work, so the pre-work is not optional. The prescribed text is Utpal Dholakia's How to Price Effectively (2017), and a coursepack on Canvas holds the cases and the supporting readings. The intellectual spine of the subject is the value pricing framework and its four pillars.
Costs normally establish the floor; what a buyer would part with for the practical and emotional benefits received fixes the ceiling; reference prices, meaning competitor prices, the firm's own historical prices and any other price the buyer encounters before purchase, set the comparison the buyer makes; and the value proposition governs how much weight each of the other three carries in a given decision.
Almost every question the subject asks is a question about which of those four inputs should dominate, and the quantitative work exists to make that choice defensible.
You will compute price elasticity, the break even volume change that a price cut or rise has to clear, unit contribution and break even volume, customer lifetime value on both a finite and an infinite horizon, and the economic value your product creates for a specific buyer relative to a named competitor.
Module 4 then asks how anyone knows what a customer will pay and answers with three named methods: the Van Westendorp price sensitivity meter and the Becker DeGroot Marschak procedure as direct methods, and conjoint analysis as an indirect one. There is no exam. On the subject schedule the row for the week beginning 2 November reads NO Exam, and the only thing due that week is the Final Executive Summary.
The mark is built from a 70% individual Portfolio and 30% of group case work. The Portfolio is two reflective summary notes of at most 600 words each, worth 15% apiece, plus a 2,000 word Final Executive Summary worth 40% in which you write as if applying for a role at a pricing consultancy and synthesise the notes against the three subject learning objectives.
The Case Analysis Reports are worth 30% as two group reports at 15% each: groups of three to four members submit a deck of 10 to 15 slides excluding appendices before 2:00 pm on the Thursday the case is due, and every report must carry a compulsory Model and Decision Audit slide covering assumptions, uncertainties, tools used and where managerial judgement changed the answer.
Five business cases are discussed across the session and every student is expected to read all five, but each group writes only its two assigned reports. Groups that submit but are not selected to present become the Management Assessment Team, separately assessed out of 2 marks. Two rules shape how you should plan the session.
A reflective summary note may only be written about a class you attended, so attendance and marks are directly linked, and four of the note's fifteen rubric points ride on specific references to at least two workshop moments. And the subject states plainly that no late submission will be marked and no email submission is accepted, which makes a missed deadline a lost component rather than a lost few percent.
No hurdle requirement is stated anywhere in the subject materials, so confirm that, along with every date and weight, in your own Subject Outline, which the subject names as the definitive source in the event of any difference.
Was the price cut effective? Margin arithmetic on a four branch service business
- +1Compute the hurdle first. The break even volume change is minus delta divided by mu plus delta, where mu is the gross profit margin and delta is the percentage price change. Here that is 0.10 divided by (0.60 minus 0.10) = 0.20, so the cut needed volume to rise 20.0% simply to hold profit flat.
- +1Compute what actually happened. 1,180,000 divided by 980,000 minus 1 = 0.2041, so volume rose 20.4%.
- +1Compare the two numbers. Actual exceeded the hurdle by 0.4 percentage points, which on a base of 980,000 transactions is a margin of victory of roughly 4,000 transactions. The cut was effective, but barely.
- +1Answer the second question separately, because the hurdle has moved. After the first cut the margin is 0.60 minus 0.10 = 0.50 of the new price, so another 10% cut would require 0.10 divided by (0.50 minus 0.10) = 25% more volume, and it would have to come from demand that the first cut has already drawn forward. Recommend against a second cut unless there is evidence that the remaining demand is at least as price responsive as the demand already captured.
Key terms
- Value pricing framework
- An organised, adaptable and complete way of arriving at sound prices and then carrying them into the market, built on four pillars: costs, customer value, reference prices and the value proposition. The first three are inputs; the value proposition decides how much weight each input carries in a particular decision.
- Customer value
- The total amount of money a customer is willing to pay for the functional and hedonic benefits received from a product. It normally establishes the ceiling, the most that could ever be asked, and it differs from buyer to buyer for the identical item.
- Reference price
- Any price a customer compares yours against before purchase, including competitor prices, the company's own historical prices and prices encountered elsewhere. Reference prices explain why a technically justified price can still be rejected as unfair.
- Price elasticity of demand
- The ratio of the relative change in volume to the relative change in price, so it measures the slope of the demand curve in percentage terms. It is unit free, which allows comparison across markets without standardising units, and business to consumer elasticities have a published mean of minus 2.62 and median of minus 2.22.
- Break even volume change
- The percentage volume change a price change must produce for profit to be unchanged, computed as minus the percentage price change divided by the sum of the gross profit margin and that price change. It sets a hurdle without requiring any estimate of customer behaviour.
- Customer lifetime value
- The present value of the stream of revenue a customer produces, net of the cost of serving them and of the cost of acquiring them. Over an unbounded horizon with stable revenue and cost it equals margin per period divided by the sum of the churn rate and the discount rate, less acquisition cost.
- Economic value to the customer
- The price of the closest competing offer, plus the money value of everything your product does better, minus the money value of everything it does worse. It is the maximum a fully informed buyer should pay, and the price is then set by deciding how much of the value created to share with the buyer.
- Value proposition
- A focused and targeted explanation of the main reasons a customer should buy this product instead of a competing offer, describing specific features, the benefits they deliver, and the point of difference relative to competitors from the customer's point of view. It sets guidelines and constraints for all pricing activity.
- Van Westendorp price sensitivity meter
- A survey method that asks four questions about the prices at which a product becomes too expensive, expensive, inexpensive and so inexpensive that quality is doubted, then reads four price points off the intersections of the cumulative response curves: the indifference price point, the points of marginal cheapness and expensiveness, and the optimal price point.
UTS24760 FAQ
How is this subject assessed?
There is no exam. The mark is a 70% individual Portfolio plus 30% of group case work. The Portfolio is two reflective summary notes at 15% each, capped at 600 words, plus a 2,000 word Final Executive Summary at 40%. The case component is two group Case Analysis Reports at 15% each, submitted as decks of 10 to 15 slides before 2:00 pm on the Thursday the case is due.
Those four weights sum to 100. No hurdle requirement is stated anywhere in the subject materials, so confirm that in your Subject Outline along with the exact dates, and note that the subject states no late submission will be marked and no email submission accepted.
What is margin arithmetic and why does it matter so much in this subject?
Margin arithmetic answers a sharper question than elasticity does: how much volume change is needed to justify a particular price change. You need only two inputs, the gross profit margin and the proposed price change, and the break even volume change is minus the price change divided by the sum of the margin and the price change.
It matters because it converts a vague worry about discounting into a number you can test against actual sales data. At a 25% margin a 5% price cut needs volume to rise 25%; at a 40% margin the same cut needs only 14.3%. Almost every case in this subject can be opened with this calculation.
What do the case analysis reports actually reward?
Nine of the fifteen marks go to thinking rather than presentation: 5 for case analysis and use of tools, theory and evidence, and 4 for managerial recommendations and decision quality. Presentation structure, the professional quality of the slides, and response to questions carry 2 each.
The report is defined as a detailed written report with quantitative analysis and calculations where appropriate, and the guide tells you to show all calculations in the appendix, which does not count toward the 10 to 15 slide limit.
Every report must also include a compulsory slide titled Model and Decision Audit covering assumptions, uncertainties, tools used including any generative AI, and where managerial judgement shaped the recommendation.
How do I calculate customer lifetime value for the case?
Over an unbounded horizon with stable revenue and cost, lifetime value is the per period margin divided by one minus the retention rate plus the discount rate, less acquisition cost. The denominator is simply the churn rate plus the discount rate, the two independent ways a future dollar loses value.
For a finite horizon, sum the per period margin weighted by the survival probability raised to the power of the period minus one, discounted, then subtract acquisition cost. The exponent is period minus one, not period, because the customer is certain to be present in the first period.
The module's written case asks you to run the calculation with and without a contract so that the difference shows the economic value of the contract itself.
How would a firm know what a customer is willing to pay?
Module 4 gives three methods. The Van Westendorp price sensitivity meter asks four questions and reads four price points from where the cumulative response curves cross.
The Becker DeGroot Marschak procedure is incentive compatible: the consumer names a reservation price, a realized price is drawn from an announced distribution, and they buy at the drawn price only if their reservation price is at least as high, which makes stating true willingness to pay the best response.
Conjoint analysis is the indirect method, inferring willingness to pay from trade offs between price and other attributes, and it is taught in its own session. The published comparison set for this subject finds the price sensitivity meter biased by its hypothetical nature yet of high predictive quality, comparable to the incentive aligned procedure.
Why does attendance affect my reflective note mark?
The task description states that you may only submit a note about a class you have attended, and the rubric puts 4 of 15 points on workshop anchoring and specificity, meaning specific and vivid references to at least two workshop moments such as a pricing calculation, a disagreement, or feedback received. It also states that generic summaries of lecture content will not receive high marks.
The practical consequence is that the note cannot be reconstructed from readings the night before. Keep three lines of notes after each workshop and the criterion is already banked, and those same notes become the evidence base for the 40% Executive Summary.
Can I use generative AI in this subject?
Yes, with declaration and within limits the subject sets out. Leaning on a generative tool to get a concept clear is fine; the note itself has to be written by you, out of what was actually taught, and the subject warns that a note reading as machine output, carrying theory, terms or frameworks that never came up in the subject, attracts a heavy penalty.
A declaration of whether and how AI was used, including limitations or errors you identified, is compulsory in both notes and is a required section of the Final Executive Summary; in the note rubric it carries a mark of its own. Case reports must also acknowledge any AI use and record the tools used on the Model and Decision Audit slide.
Sia can walk you through a margin arithmetic or lifetime value calculation line by line and check your reasoning, which is exactly the use the subject permits; University of Technology Sydney academic integrity rules apply to everything you submit.
How to prepare for the assessments
Treat 24760 as a subject you do rather than read. The assessed surfaces are a group deck, two short reflective notes and one long synthesis, and all four reward the same thing: a defensible pricing recommendation built on a calculation you can show. Build that capability in three layers.
First, get fluent with five calculations, because they recur in every case: unit contribution and the profit identity, the break even volume change, price elasticity from two observations, customer lifetime value on an infinite horizon with and without a contract, and the economic value bridge from a competitor price through differentiators and deficiencies.
Do each one in a spreadsheet rather than on paper, since three of the subject's own exercises are spreadsheet exercises and case reports are expected to show the working in an appendix. If your spreadsheet skills are slow, fix that in the first fortnight, not during a case week. Second, run the workshop as an assessment rehearsal, not as a class.
A reflective summary note may only be written about a class you attended, and four of its fifteen points come from specific workshop moments, so capture three lines immediately after each session: what was calculated, what your group disagreed about, and what you got wrong.
That file solves the note and then becomes the evidence base for the Executive Summary, where every capability claim must be supported by evidence from your own work in the subject. Third, practise the sentence that earns the recommendation marks. Every case answer should contain a line of the form: we recommend price X, because input Y should dominate this decision, accepting risk Z.
Getting there means classifying the pricing occasion first, since the four pillars carry different weights for a new product, a new version, a change in business conditions and a change in customer preferences.
Keep the compulsory Model and Decision Audit slide in mind while you analyse rather than after: every assumption you make is a line on that slide, and a group that records assumptions as it goes writes the slide in ten minutes. Finally, protect the deadlines. Case reports are due at 2:00 pm on a Thursday, not at the end of that day, and the subject states that no late submission will be marked and no email submission accepted.
Put all seven dates in a calendar in Week 1, note that the schedule and the Canvas assignment page disagree on the first reflective note deadline, work to the earlier one, and confirm everything against your Subject Outline, which the subject names as the definitive source.
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