Most marketers know price is extremely influential in how their brand is perceived. Many are proud of their brand’s ability to drive a price premium and the majority are aware of how powerful pricing can be in driving profit.

Despite all this, only around a third (34.1%) of marketers say they or their team have influence or control over their business’s pricing strategy, according to data from Marketing Week’s 2025 Career & Salary Survey.

Of all marketing’s four Ps (price, product, place, promotion), pricing is often seen as the most commercial and with the most immediate influence on the P&L. For marketing to be taken seriously in these discussions, it can’t be seen as “the colouring in team” notes Rachel Exton, vice-president of global brand at education company Pearson.

She explains marketing must position itself as “a strategic business growth driver” if it wants to be taken seriously in discussions around price.

It needs to be data-led, it can’t be opinion-led.

Rachel Exton, Pearson

“I would encourage every marketer to make sure that they are positioning themselves as a strategic growth driver. But you just can’t ask that, you’ve got to earn it in terms of the way you show up,” Exton says.

For her, marketers need to demonstrate their budget is delivering in terms of ROI in order to prove their credentials as a growth driver. At Pearson, she has been able to earn marketing “a seat at the table” through this approach.

When it comes to actually getting involved in these discussions, bringing numbers to the table is key.

“It needs to be data-led, it can’t be opinion-led. So you need to bring data and you really do need to have both qual and quant data,” Exton says.

Given the data-led nature of pricing discussions, where data sits in an organisation can impact the level of influence marketing has over pricing, she notes. For example, at Pearson, competitor analysis – something that is crucial for pricing strategy – sits within her team, which is not the case in every organisation.

Marketing effectiveness encompasses everything from price to distribution

In order to be taken seriously, marketers must be commercially minded and comfortable with data. Marketing and digital director for Henkel’s consumer brands, Nikki Vadera explains her team has a strong degree of influence over the pricing lever.

Given the position of marketing as a commercial decision-maker in the business, Henkel looks to recruit marketers that can continue to help build that environment.

“Even when recruiting, having people join the team, they need to have a strong level of commercial acumen, or data and analytics ability, because it’s actually in Henkel. It’s marketing that are sending out the market shares, it’s marketing sending out penetration data,” she says.

Vadera advises marketers in other organisations to get comfortable with using data to have meaningful influence over these discussions.

“No one can argue with data,” she notes.

Sector dynamics

The level of influence the marketing function has over pricing can be very sector and business-dependent, notes Exton.

Before joining Pearson, she worked at household technology company Dyson and prior to that spent time in FMCG businesses including Reckitt and Unilever. Her experience is that, in FMCG businesses, marketing has a lot more opportunity to lead the whole mix.

“From the moment I joined Dyson and Pearson, pricing is done by sales,” she says. “Marketing is, of course, involved. It’s a conversation, but nowhere near [FMCG] levels.”

Pricing plays a crucial role in the positioning of a product and, therefore, is central to the launch strategies of many brands. Matt Knight, commercial director at Laithwaites Wine, notes that in FMCG organisations marketers have a relative amount of freedom to select a price and then build a positioning around that.

We’ve been around for 140 years and to stay around for another 140 years, we need to maintain our positioning as a luxury brand.

Melody Lee, Mercedes-Benz US

“As a brand who manufactures or creates the product, it’s probably a lot easier [to control pricing] than someone who is selling somebody else’s product,” Knight says, noting retail brands often have little flex.

Before joining Laithwaites, Knight worked at online retail giant Amazon, where “no one set the price” and it was largely determined by algorithm.

At retail brands, it might not even just be that the marketing function itself has a lack influence over pricing, he notes. It might be the business itself has limited control. In those cases, marketers must work within the bounds of what is possible, utilising tools like promotional strategy and communications to drive messaging around positioning.

Knight also worked at Ocado where,  again price positioning was largely determined by brand partners. However, the online supermarket did have its low-price promise positioning, something that was within marketing’s control.

Most marketers don’t have influence over the 4Ps excluding promotion

“We, as the marketing team, didn’t have any control or influence over the actual price of the product, but we did have that tool, we did have the low-price promise,” he says,

“That was part of our toolbox, of our mechanisms to be able to talk to customers. It was a marketing message and it was something we were able to use to influence customer behaviour.”

For luxury brands, control over pricing is absolutely crucial. In the case of Mercedes-Benz, price positioning is an expression of long-held brand equity and, therefore, essential for marketing to have influence over, says US CMO Melody Lee.

“We’ve been around for 140 years and to stay around for another 140 years, we need to maintain our positioning as a luxury brand,” she says.

The price is right?

For a CMO at a luxury brand like Mercedes-Benz, price is inherent to its overall positioning. Indeed, this should be the case at almost all brands. Whether your brand is seen as a super-premium or a bargain offering, price will naturally play a big role in customer perceptions.

A brand that tries to position itself as premium, while promoting heavily or engaging in price wars, will fall flat. There must be a joined up approach between positioning, communications and pricing, says Vadera.

“The disconnect for me is, how are you building equity in your brand if you’re potentially not having a pricing strategy that fits the direction of your brand?” she says.

For Vadera, brand has a crucial role in pricing discussions. Henkel’s brands, by and large, have premium positioning. While the FMCG giant must work together with its retailers to ensure that pricing strategy aligns, it’s also important to protect that brand positioning.

You have to have the forums, and the safety and trust in your business culture, to have those debates.

Nikki Vadera, Henkel

Pricing strategy is about more than what a product costs at that moment and should also take into account the long-term plans for a brand, says Vadera. She suggests marketers must ask themselves: “What’s the five-year plan for the category? What’s the five-year plan for the brand?”

Knight wonders if marketing being cut off from discussions around price (as well as product and place) is limiting the function’s ability to do its job effectively. Many marketers do their jobs “agnostically”, he says, applying the same marketing principles regardless of whether they’re selling handbags, coffee or B2B technology.

While applying the same principles of growth can be helpful, a lack of understanding about the business you’re in, the product it’s selling and its pricing strategy can be limiting.

“The more you understand about the product you’re selling, the actual attributes of the product, the qualities of it, why it’s good, why it might have a weakness against the market and then the value of that, and the price of that, the promotional discount. These are all tools you should have in your toolbox to be able to sell the product and be a better marketer,” Knight adds.

Breaking down silos

Price and the marketing function have been brought closer together by Laithwaites in recent years. Last year, the business created one commercial function, headed up by Knight, which brings together pricing, promotion and marketing.

“It makes sense when you’re looking at, what are our marketing messages going to be next month?” he says.

“Well, our marketing message is largely going to be what new products we’ve got, what interesting products we have, what promotions and discounts we have, and what’s good value. Price is a huge part of that, so it makes sense to have them as close together as you can.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, according to Marketing Week’s research, CMOs (46.2%) are much more likely to report they or their team have influence over pricing strategy versus more junior roles, such senior managers (31.4%) or executive level (22%) marketers. While it’s hardly shocking that senior marketers should be most influential in pricing, the fact that most junior marketers feel disconnected from the strategy, may lead to future skill gaps.

Worryingly, the data also suggests over half of CMOs don’t feel like they personally or their team have an influence over price.

‘Soft power’: How marketers can exert influence over the 4Ps

At Henkel, pricing strategy is decided in a couple of ways. First, in a monthly commercial cycle meeting, where leadership from the sales, marketing, supply chain and commercial excellence teams come together to have an “open discussion” around pricing. While those monthly meetings are attended by leadership, this strategy is then passed down to a smaller team, responsible for executing this strategy.

“Each of the brand managers have what’s called a brand tactical meeting once a month with the people who are actually going to execute the activity, where they then deep dive into what’s missing, what do we need? What’s the initial feedback?” Vadera explains.

She points out that pricing strategy isn’t just a flat decision on price, but encompasses things like promotional depth, frequency and type, for example deciding between multi-buy offers versus price cuts. Henkel finds the two different forums facilitate the best pricing strategy, by involving both leadership and the people responsible for executing strategy.

This doesn’t mean that all functions work in perfect harmony, with Vadera noting there is plenty of debate in these cross-functional meetings. What matters is that the organisation facilitates the cross-functional work.

Striking a balance: Marketers on navigating the price promotion ‘tightrope’

“You have to have the forums, and the safety and trust in your business culture, to have those debates,” she states, adding that working in “silos” means nobody wins.

This is a view shared by Exton, who emphasises the best result for the business is when functions work collaboratively.

“The sweet spot, I’ve always found, is when you’ve got product, marketing, sales and technology all working seamlessly together,” she says.

Exton encourages marketers to think less about influence or leadership over pricing, and instead concentrate on getting to the best decision for the organisation by working together.

“I don’t care who leads it, but what I do care is that it’s done in the best way. The best companies, the best results are when the product, sales, marketing and tech teams move as one, and it’s really fluid and you respect each other. You get each other involved,” she says.

“That is the more important thing to think about, versus who controls or who leads. It doesn’t matter if you have a really strong, collaborative working model.”