A firm also has to look at a myriad of other factors before setting its prices. Those factors include the offering' s costs, the demand, the customers whose needs it is designed to meet, the external environment-such as the competition, the economy, and government regulations-and other aspects of the marketing mix, such as the nature of the offering, the current stage of its product life cycle, and its promotion and distribution. If a company plans to sell its products or services in international markets, research on the factors for each market must be analyzed before setting prices. Organizations must understand buyers, competitors, the economic conditions, and political regulations in other markets before they can compete successfully.
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The costs of the product-its inputs-including the amount spent on product development, testing, and packaging required have to be taken into account when a pricing decision is made. So do the costs related to promotion and distribution. For example, when a new offering is launched, its promotion costs can be very high because people need to be made aware that it exists. Thus, the offering's stage in the product life cycle can affect its price.

Value analysis is a systematic review of the production, purchasing and product design processes to reduce overall product costs. This can be accomplished through a variety of activities, including the following:
- Designing products to use lower-tolerance parts that are less expensive
- Switching to lower-cost components
- Standardizing parts across product platforms in order to achieve volume discounts
- Altering production processes to minimize the amount of production cycle time, thereby reducing labor costs
- Introducing automation to strip labor costs out of the production process
- Altering product packaging to lower its cost while still protecting the product The process is not a wholesale attack on costs. Costs are only reduced when the result will not im-pact the perceived level of quality experienced by customers, or the level of customer satisfaction.

Assessing the risks by quantifying them should be done. Even with qualitative risk assessment, quantifying is still important since risks need to be prioritised.
Risk assessment can be qualitative or quantitative. Perform qualitative and perform quantitative risk analysis are two processes within the project risk management knowledge area, in the planning process group. While qualitative risk analysis should generally be performed on all risks, for all projects, quantitative risk analysis has a more limited use, based on the type of project, the project risks, and the availability of data to use to conduct the quantitative analysis.
Qualitative Risk Analysis
A qualitative risk analysis prioritises the identified project risks using a pre-defined rating scale. Risks will be scored based on their probability or likelihood of occurring and the impact on project objectives should they occur.
Probability/likelihood is commonly ranked on a zero to one scale (for example, .3 equating to a 30% probability of the risk event occurring).
The impact scale is organizationally defined (for example, a one to five scale, with five being the highest impact on project objectives - such as budget, schedule, or quality).
A qualitative risk analysis will also include the appropriate categorization of the risks, either source-based or effect-based.
Quantitative Risk Analysis
A quantitative risk analysis is a further analysis of the highest priority risks during a which a numerical or quantitative rating is assigned in order to develop a probabilistic analysis of the project.
A quantitative analysis:
- Quantifies the possible outcomes for the project and assesses the probability of achieving specific project objectives
- Provides a quantitative approach to making decisions when there is uncertainty
- Creates realistic and achievable cost, schedule or scope targets
In order to conduct a quantitative risk analysis, you will need high-quality data, a well-developed project model, and a prioritized lists of project risks (usually from performing a qualitative risk analysis).

Specifications for through-life contracts must be clear. They should use precise technical language and avoid any ambiguity as much as possible. In most cases, 'good quality' is ambiguous. The con-tractor doesn't know exactly which product the buying organisation needs and how to supply that product.
Other notices for description of requirement are:
- Short and simply description
- Clear definitions at the beginning of the documents
- Clarify abbreviations (if any), but abbreviations should be avoided as much as possible
- Avoid any 'slang'
- Use imperative forms of language whenever possible.
LO 3, AC 3.2

"Standards are often produced by professional bodies (maybe national or international bodies). Standards tend to be stable for a period of time, therefore, they are likely to be static and discourage innovation." Reference:
LO 3, AC 3.1