The Professional Pricing Society’s December 2022 survey of pricing professionals received 743 responses from a cross-section of industries across the globe. The mission of PPS is to nurture a growing community of pricing professionals committed to disseminating pricing expertise throughout the business world. As part of this mission, PPS conducts surveys with the hope that this information provides a good synopsis of where pricing stands as a career option while also providing a good demonstration of pricing’s status in the business world. For more information, please email contactus@pricingsociety.com.

The Journal of Professional Pricing, March 2023

The Professional Pricing Society (PPS) has been surveying the pricing community since 1998 as a service to our global membership and the business community worldwide. We use responses to analyze the growth of pricing as a profession and to continue to develop resources to help pricers in the areas they identify as opportunities for professional development.

In December 2022, we again surveyed pricers as well as professionals in similar fields, receiving 743 responses from the worldwide business community. Since PPS is the center of the pricing discipline worldwide, our survey results are widely used as a benchmark for a variety of pricing queries: salaries, reporting structures, career opportunities, pricing software usage, and key components of job satisfaction from both positive and negative standpoints. Our organization acquires survey data as a free service to our members and those interested in demographic trends for pricing and related functions. Past surveys are available to our members via the PPS Publications Archive (https://publications.pricingsociety.com). We hope that this information provides a good synopsis of where pricing stands as a career option and a good demonstration of pricing’s importance within the business world.

Pricing Demographics

Almost 79% of our survey respondents work for medium-large or very-large corporations: 38.6% work for companies with annual revenues of more than $5 billion (or equivalent), and the largest segment at 40.1% report that their company annual revenues are between $500 million and $5 billion. A significantly sized, but smaller group (21.3%) are from companies with less than $500 million in annual revenue. When compared to our last survey in December 2021, the largest group (over $5 billion revenue) was larger this year, the middle group (between $500 million and $5 billion) was slightly smaller, and the smallest group (under $500 million) shrunk by about 4%.

The number of employees in the respondents’ companies devoted primarily to pricing in Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) employees shows that 42.2% responded that their companies have fewer than 10 pricing FTEs – this is much lower than our last survey. 32.1% report having between 10 and 49 pricers – slightly lower than last year. 25.7% stated that their organizations have at least 50 employees dedicated to pricing – this is much higher than our December 2021 survey. The most significant shift is a decrease from the smallest group in favor of larger numbers – therefore a significant migration in favor of more Pricing FTEs per company.

Respondents from American companies reported an average of 4.14 Pricing FTEs per billion dollars in annual revenue, while European companies reported an average of 3.29 Pricing FTEs per billion euros in revenue. Given the dollar-to-euro exchange rate during the survey period, American organizations have about 18% more Pricing FTEs than their European counterparts.

Figure One: Salary Excluding Bonuses by Pricing Title

Pricing Salaries

Survey respondents in the USA reported moderate salary increases at all the major job titles surveyed: Analysts reported an average salary of $104,594 which is an increase of about 2% versus our last survey, but over 10% versus two years ago. In the USA, Managers reported similar increases with an average salary of $134,304 (up 2.1% over last year and up 12% over two years) and Directors earned $184,762 (up 1.4% versus last year and almost 10% over two years ago). Vice Presidents reported salary increases as well, with an average of $258,761 – up 3.1% versus our last survey. This year’s survey showed much smaller increases than last year’s survey, but American salaries did grow across the board.

In the Euro Zone, reported salaries were higher for Analysts, but Managers and Directors did not have large increases. European Analysts earned €67,250 which was 8.9% more than our survey from a year ago. Managers reported €94,788 which was virtually the same as last year. Toward the top of the organization chart, Directors averaged €137,167 (up 1.9%).

Across all categories and regardless of title, the average pricer now earns $160,583 in the USA and €99,910 in the Euro Zone.

Figure Two: Salary by Pricing Title

Salary Trends by Industry

There is a very wide range of reported salaries by industry according to our survey respondents. Those in Consulting ($218,143), High Tech ($192,438), and Transportation ($183,607) reported the highest average salaries. B2B, Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals, Financial, Services, Industrial, Retail, and Telecommunications businesses all reported average salaries between $160,000 and $180,000. The lowest reported average salaries were in Manufacturing, Distribution, and Hospitality organizations.

Figure Three: Pricing Job Title Distribution

Pricing Job Title Mix

Senior Management (Presidents, Vice Presidents, and General Managers) accounts for 15.5% of overall Job titles. Managers are the largest individual group (38.1%), followed by Directors (27.6%), and Analysts (14.6%). “Other” job titles totaled 4.2% of survey respondents.

Reporting Structures and Experience in Pricing

More pricers report to Senior Management (27.5%) than any other function, followed by large groups that report to Finance (21.6%), Marketing (18.6%), and Sales (11.4%). Smaller groups reported to Product Groups or Product Management (9.3%) and to a Business Unit (6.4%). About 5.2% reported a combination of the above or a different reporting structure. The most noteworthy trend in reporting structures is a shift from reporting to Business Units and Product Groups in favor of Senior Management, Finance, and Marketing.

With regard to our respondents’ range of experience within pricing, 5.5% claimed that they had two years or less experience and 13.1% stated three to five years of experience. The largest groups were 11-20 years (41.4%), six to ten years (22.4%), and more than 20 years of experience in pricing (17.6%).

Figure Four: Pricing Reporting Structures

Overall Pricing Job Satisfaction

This is the 12^th survey in which we have asked respondents how satisfied they are with their jobs and about unmet wants and needs. On a scale of 1 (very dissatisfied) to 10 (very satisfied), pricing professionals rated their jobs 7.03, which was much higher (+0.24) than our last survey. Vice Presidents were lower than average with a reported overall job satisfaction of 6.79. Directors reported the same overall rating, which was very slightly higher than last year (+0.01), while Managers were much higher at 7.32 and Analysts were lower at 6.65.

PPS Pricing Power Index

Our December 2022 survey was the fourth iteration in which we asked respondents about their assessment of their company’s pricing power to determine the PPS Pricing Power Index. This year’s overall average was 6.47 on a scale of 1 (no pricing power whatsoever) to 10 (absolute and complete pricing power), which represented a small decrease from last year’s overall average of 6.50.

There was an interesting mixture of reported Pricing Power when broken down by Job Title: Vice Presidents reported the lowest Pricing power at 6.14, but Directors were highest at 6.56, closely followed by Managers with 6.54. Analysts reported the lowest Pricing Power at 6.11. Therefore, the middle sections reported significantly more pricing power than those at the extremes.

There was also a significant deviation in the PPS Pricing Power Index depending on Industry. Utilities (7.51), Wholesale (7.24), Education (7.17), and Leisure / Hospitality (7.05) businesses reported higher than average Pricing Power, while High Tech (6.39), Healthcare / Pharma (6.35), Industrial (6.13), Distribution (6.05), and Agriculture (5.80) all reported lower than average Pricing Power. Telecom, Services, Financial, Retail, Logistics, Transportation, B2B, Consulting, and Manufacturing were all in the middle range and close to the overall average Pricing Power.

On average, respondents from the Euro Zone (6.38) reported lower average Pricing Power than those in the USA (6.47). Canadians (6.68) and those in Great Britain (6.61) reported higher than average Pricing Power (7.20) while those in Brazil were lower (6.16).

Other Elements of Pricing Job Satisfaction

We asked pricers to rate their feelings about certain elements of the profession. 92.5% reported satisfaction in knowing that pricing is strategically important for their companies (this is up from 90.7% in our last survey), and 73.9% find their careers intellectually stimulating (up from 70.1%). 70.5% of respondents find their careers challenging (down from 72.1%), but more than half (55.2%) felt that they were underappreciated by their firms (down from 61.4%). Only about half (49.0%) described their jobs as “rewarding.”

Training Opportunities received a higher average score of 6.14 on a 10-point scale, up from 5.71 last year. “Recognition and Acknowledgement Received from Employers” was rated 6.05, which was slightly higher than last year (6.02).

The highest–rated elements of job satisfaction were “Communication within the Pricing Group” (8.01) and “Amount of Influence” (7.61). Communication with other Groups received 6.79 and Career Advancement Opportunities increased slightly over our last survey (6.36 vs. 6.28).

The most satisfying job aspect for pricers was Increasing Company Profitability (64.7% of survey respondents) and the least satisfying was dealing with Corporate Politics, mentioned on 56.8% of all responses, followed by Being Understaffed (40.7% of all responses).

Pricing Software Use

More survey respondents say that their companies are using externally designed pricing-specific software (35.7%), passing those who primarily use Microsoft Excel or something similar for pricing (29.9%). 13.7% use internally developed, or in-house, pricing software, and 8.7% say that they are in the process of changing software tools. 6.6% claim that they do not use pricing software and are not considering adopting software soon.

Other Survey Items

We also asked our members for qualitative answers on how to improve their pricing power and job satisfaction. The most common answers centered on:

• Better pricing tools and analytics.
• Increased hiring to reduce being overworked.
• More training, either inside or outside of the organization.
• Executive support to remove politics and departmental silos.

Many respondents also reported that their company salesforce is moderately to very heavily involved with pricing decision-making with high levels of authority for discounting.

We asked a question about gender on this year’s survey. Of those respondents who chose to answer (slightly more than one-third), 32.6% were female, a slight decrease from 33.6% in our last survey. 67.4% were male.

As the only professional association dedicated to supporting the development and expansion of the Pricing profession worldwide, we always encourage your feedback regarding your professional development needs, career satisfaction, obstacles you are facing, and requests for any other assistance we can provide to help you achieve your career and advancement goals. Please feel free to contact us at any time with questions, feedback, or any other inquiries.