Research Paper on:
British Gas Pricing Strategy

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
and as such had 100% of the available market for mains gas. The competition that existed was very limited and mostly in terms of competition in terms of portable gas  supplies, such as seen with Calor Gas, or alternative fuels systems, such as electricity or oil which were substitutes rather than direct competitors. Today the situation is very different.  When Margaret Thatcher came to power as the leader of the Conservative government there was a change in policy, an in the 1980s a policy of liberalisation meant that British  Gas was sold off to corporate and individual investors. It took many years after this for competition to emerge, but today most power companies (which were once regional companies) and  even some supermarkets are all competing to sell gas to the gas consumers. It is against this background that British Gas has had to make many strategic decisions, which  have included both related and unrelated diversification which have also been accompanied by careful pricing strategies. To understand the way pricing strategy  can be seen we first need to understand the aspects of pricing. The first issue is that of price elasticity. There is a need for a company to understand what  the result on any price increase or decrease will on both the sales and the total revenue in order to understand the pricing options it will have. This is known  as the price elasticity. In reality, there will be many different influences on the supply and demand relationship, such as substitutes and competing products. However, to begin with we consider  only the individual product and the influence that price alone will have. Price elasticity of demand is based on the change that will be seen in the demand