商务英语内容，谢谢！
Often a company’s pricing goals for a product vary over time, depending on the product’s stage in its life cycle. During the introductory phase, the objective might be to recover development costs quickly as possible. To achieve this goal, the manufacturer might charge a high initial price— a practice known as skimming — and then drop the price later, when the product is no longer a novelty and competition heats up. Alternatively, a company might try to build sales vilume by charging a low initial price, a practice known as penetration pricing. The objective would be to reach a high volume of sales quickly in order to achieve economies of scale and reduce per-unit costs. This approach might have the added advantage of discouraging competitors, because the low price limits the profit potential for everyone.
Later, during the maturity phase, the goal might be to attract additional customers or to maximize the cash provided by the product. As the product enters its decline, the company’s objective might be to get out of the business quickly. To accomplish this, it might establish a low price that will clear out the inventory.
Every company must translate its own particular objectives into specific prices for specific products. To do so, it must first analyze its costs, since costs establish the minimum acceptable price. To survive over the long term, the company must charge a price that will cover the cost incurred in producing and selling the product.
Two types of costs are associated with producing a product: fixed costs and variable costs. Fixed costs — including rent payment, utility bills, insurance premiums, and administrative expenses — are not affected by the number of products sold. Regardless of whether a company sells 10 units or 100 units, the rent on the building must be paid on time. Variable costs, on the other hand, do depend on the volume sold. They include raw materials, labor used in production, and supplies consumed during production. The total cost of operating the business is the sum of the fixed and variable costs.
In general, costs decline as volume increases. The more units you produce, the lower the cost per unit tends to be, since the fixed costs are spread over a larger number of units. In addition, as you produce more units, you achieve economies of sale in production, distribution, and promotion. Also, as employees become more skilled at their jobs, production and marketing costs decline even more. This phenomenon, referred to as the experience curve, gives companies an incentive to price their products relatively low in order to build volume
不要电脑翻译的哦。谢谢~