L11 - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of FirmsReturn

This article analyses the distribution of firms by size in six selected countries in 2012 and 2017. Estimates are always made for the whole economy and two subgroups of firms. We compare the Visegrad Four countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) with similar economic activities and two neighbouring economically more developed countries (Germany and Austria). As the main objective of the article, we describe the distribution of firms by verifying the validity of Zipf's law in selected economies and their sectors. The results confirm the positively skewed distribution of company sizes measured by sales revenues, but Zipf's law does not apply to the distribution of all companies by the magnitude of sales in the whole economy (or in an economic subgroup), but only to sections in the right tail of the distribution (companies with higher turnover within the whole economy), which is in line with numerous research studies.
Implications for Central European audience: This article attempts to contribute to the state of the art of firm size distribution in two ways. Firstly, it reviews a wide range of research studies looking into the existence of power laws in firm size distribution. Secondly, it analyses the distribution of firms by size in six selected Central European countries in 2012 and 2017, where four sample countries were burdened with interrupted business activities during a communist regime (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia), and two countries are their neighbours not exposed to changes in the political regime (Germany and Austria). 

Several researchers suggest that value-based pricing (VBP) is one of the most profitable pricing methods for companies competing in today's business environment. Interestingly, the implementation rates of VBP are, however, rather low. Numerous barriers to the implementation of value-based pricing have been found by researchers already. Although, a theoretical model for determining whether value-based pricing may be a suitable pricing method for a business is yet to be found in the literature. This study aims to introduce a theoretical model to aid pricing executives in their pricing method selection. For this purpose, 20 semi-structured in-depth expert interviews with German pricing experts were conducted as part of qualitative data analysis. The experts were selected using a purposive selection method. Pricing experts were asked to describe the most important factors for determining whether a company may implement value-based pricing.  We identified two main factors as being necessities for using VBP. The first factor named by the authors was the brand advantage (BA), and the second factor was represented by the delivered product benefits (DB) as perceived by the customer. Based on these two factors, a two-dimensional, quadrant-based theoretical model was developed and was named the VBP Determination Matrix. The matrix now evaluates a company's position within the matrix based on the factors BA and DB. It leads to direct calls-to-action for properly choosing the most suitable pricing method. This study's theoretical contribution was the development of a so far non-existing two-dimensional model for the determination of the suitability of value-based pricing. Business practitioners are now provided with an easy-to-use and highly applicable model to determine the initial suitability of implementing VBP. Senior management is given direct calls-to-action, whether an investment to implement VBP shall be made and whether to allocate resources.
Implications for Central European audience: The VBP Determination Matrix is a highly applicable model recommended especially for business practitioners in pricing, marketing and management. Central European companies are recommended to utilise the model to benefit from its strategic recommendations to properly select the most suitable pricing method for profit maximisation and competitiveness optimisation.