Pricing

A study of the pricing of mobile telephony is essentially an analysis of elements driving survival of business in hyper competitive, capex intensive, technology centric businesses. Pricing is an essential ingredient of the strategy for growth and survival of operators at individual level as well as for the overall sectoral growth. Under perfect competition, the prices tend to move towards marginal costs. However, facing an exceptionally fierce competition, Indian mobile telephony service providers are driven by a long-term survival strategy of customer acquisition & increasing market share; and the services are being offered at significant discount to marginal costs leading to huge losses to operators. In this paper, quarterly data on price and demand have been used to regress two types of demand functions-a quadratic polynomial function and an exponential function with pricing as an independent variable. Further, the operators are assumed to follow revenue maximization (RM) strategy and price point leading to revenue maxima for the regressed demand function is predicted as the service price in the following time period. It is noted that from March 2008 to Sept 2016, the revenue maximization assumption yields service price close to the actuals. However, in subsequent quarters (after the entry of Reliance Jio in market), the prices were not driven by RM strategy but by the survival need of operators. As a result, the mobile telephony service prices in this period are not just lower than marginal costs but also lower than what is required for revenue maximization.

الملخص
الأصل أن التسعير الجبري يحد من الحرية الاقتصادية التي كفلها الإسلام للأفراد في المجتمع؛ ذلك أن عقود المعاوضات مبنية على الرضا، ولا يكون التحجير على المكلف إلا استثناء حين التعارض بين مصلحتين: الفرد والمجتمع ـ فالواجب على الدولة أمام هذا التعارض التدخل لحماية مصالح العامة وحراستها من خلال الحد من حرية الأفراد إذا أضرت أو أساءت لبقية المجتمع.
فإذا كان الأفراد في المجتمع الإسلامي ملتزمون بقواعد الشريعة وأسسها لا يتعرضون لمصالح المجتمع بأدنى حيف وجور فلا يخول الإمام بالتدخل في شؤونهم فيترك للأفراد كامل الحرية كما يترك تحديد الأسعار لكل من العرض والطلب ، وللبائعين أن يبيعوا كما يشاءون ماداموا لم يخرجوا عن منهج العدالة التي رسمها الله لعباده. وفي هذا يقول ابن القيم في كتابه "الطرق الحكمية" : "فإذا كان الناس يبيعون سلعهم على الوجه المعروف من غير ظلم منهم وقد ارتفع السعر إما لقلة الشيء: العرض، وإما لكثرة الخلق: الطلب ، فهذا إلى الله ، فإلزام الناس أن يبيعوا بقيمة بعينها إكراه بغير حق"( ) أما إذا وقع الظلم وعم الجور واستغل الباعة هذه الحرية التي متعهم الله بها، ووقع  منهم ما وقع وتعسفوا في استعمال حقهم فعلى الإمام أن يسارع إلى حماية المجتمع من عبث هؤلاء والضرب على أيديهم بالتسعير لا  ليوقعهم في الظلم وإنما ليعيدهم إلى العدالة التي تكفل حقهم قبل حق المجتمع .

الكلمات الدالة: الفقه الاسلامي، التسعير، العرض، الطلب، تدخل الحاكم في الاقتصاد.
Özet
İnsanın  tasarrufunda  asıl olan özgürlüktür.  Satış kontratı ancak tarafların kabulü ile imzalanır.  Fiyatların yükselmesi arz ve talep yasasına göre, ticari malların azalması talebin yükselmesinin, kendiliğinden fiyatın yükselmesine neden olur.
Bu durumlarda yönetici müdahale etmez, ancak satıcılar haklarını kötüye kullandıkları takdirde,  kendi aralarında fiyatları yükseltmek için  hileli bir işbirliği yaparlar ise  bu  ticari malların fiyatlarının doğal olmayan  yapay bir  şekilde yükselmesine neden olur, bu durumda yöneticinin müdahalesi söz konusu olur. Fiyatlarda denge oluşturur, burada artan yapay  fiyatları düşürerek  doğal fiyatına dönüşüne  kadar.    Bunun da adına  semen-i misl denir.
        Yöneticinin ticari malların fiyatlandırmasına müdahalesi fakihler arasında tartışma konusudur. Bu konu ele alındığında karşılaştırmalı ffıkhi yöntemi uygulayarak  açık ve özet bir çözüm göstermek için bir araya gelinir. Bu da fakihlerin İslam ekonomisi konularında en belirgin rollerini gösterir.
Anahtar Kelimeler:  İslam fıkhı, fiyatlandırma, arz , talep, müdahale

Abstract
Human acts are based on freedom, therefore, a sale contract cannot be concluded without the contractors ‘approval. Following the supply and demand law, commodities prices may rise if a commodity is not available in the market and highly demanded. In such a situation, the state can’t intervene. Some vendors might abusively use their rights and increase the prices above the normal; in this case the state can intervene to assure balance in prices by reducing the artificial price to a natural price or what is literally called “equivalence price.”
Nevertheless, there is a divergence among scholars about the state intervention concerning the pricing of commodities. This has led researchers to deal with the issue within the framework of comparative jurisprudence to give it a clear and a concise perception, so as to highlight the role of scholars in Islamic Economics issues.
Key Words:  Islamic jurisprudence, pricing, supply, demand, intervention.

As successful tourism firms invest heavily in marketing to defend or improve their competitive position, they increasingly need to measure their marketing performance. Previous studies related to tourism have largely focused on financial and operational performance, but the marketing perspective has been largely overlooked. Drawing on an in-depth investigation involving 12 hotel chains, 8 travel agencies and 8 tour operators, this study provides an overview of the state-of-the-art marketing performance measurements among some of the leading tourism firms in Italy. Several issues and unanswered questions are also identified.