Summary

At pivotal moments of change, it’s tempting to tinker with price. But the signal blurs as teams drift and deals slide into discounting. Real progress comes when strategic brand positioning sets expectations, sharpens target segments, and proves outcomes. That’s how organisations regain pricing power, protect margins, and accelerate decisions.

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Our Perspective

What this means for leaders navigating growth, change or transformation in their organisation.

The Real Lever

Pricing power isn’t a number on a spreadsheet; it’s market permission to earn more for the same effort because buyers see lower risk and higher value in choosing you. When pricing is treated as a finance task, it fragments accountability. When it’s rooted in positioning, it becomes a strategic lever that ties customer expectations, commercial discipline, and delivery quality into one system.

NBER notes that average firm markups in the United States have risen from about 18% above marginal cost in 1980 to roughly 67% in recent years, indicating a broad expansion of pricing power. The lesson isn’t to chase higher markups; it’s to understand that market power is constructed by design choices that signal relevance and reduce uncertainty.

Positioning Sets Expectations

Positioning earns your “right to price” by defining the category you lead, the buyer risk you remove, and the outcomes you can credibly prove. That clarity shapes how buyers compare, and what they’re prepared to pay for confidence, not just features.

Leaders should hardwire expectation-setting signals:

• Role: The specific market job you own, not the range you could do.
• Focus: The customer segment you prioritise and the ones you do not.
• Outcomes: The proof that matters to economic and technical buyers.
• Risk: The failure modes you reduce and how you share accountability.

Operating For Price Integrity

Price discipline is a downstream effect of upstream choices. If sales, product, and delivery don’t share the same narrative and proof, discounting becomes a substitute for confidence. If they do, you get tighter proposals, fewer lateral comparisons, and faster cycles.

Align operations around four decisions:

• Constrain the pipeline to buyers you can win at target margins.
• Codify the problems you own end-to-end; avoid the rest.
• Build a proof architecture: references, metrics, and pilots with clear entry and exit.
• Pre-commit trade-offs so teams default to value, not concessions.

Leadership Implications

Pricing power compounds when leaders treat brand as a system, not a campaign. Most organisations we work with see that once role, focus, and outcomes are explicit, negotiation moves from price to value, and margins follow.

Three moves reinforce momentum:

• Track price realisation and link it to positioning choices, not just deal tactics.
• Invest in evidence assets that reduce buyer risk at each stage of the cycle.
• Review segment priorities quarterly to protect relevance and avoid drift.

As markets tighten and comparisons get sharper, the organisations that turn positioning into price integrity won’t just defend margins—they’ll set the reference point others are forced to meet.

Sources:

• The Rise of Market Power and the Macroeconomic Implications — NBER

Further Resources

1. Maximising Brand ROI Through Strategic Positioning
2. The Interplay of Brand and Demand: A Strategic View
3. Brand Messaging Framework for Strategic Clarity

No two brand journeys are the same — connect with us if you’d like to test where your next step might lead. Let’s talk.

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