texas instruments mba pricing project
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Texas Instruments Pricing Project
Charles Laffiteau
July 29, 2009
Texas Instruments Pricing Project Charles Laffiteau
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Executive Summary: TI Pricing
Texas Instruments (TI) is a global leader in the semiconductor manufacturing
industry. Since they are used in so many products, semiconductors are viewed as
commodities, which results in vast competition. Manufacturers try persistently to
differentiate themselves so that they can sell their products at a premium and protect
themselves from the price wars that often result in commodity industries.
TI relies heavily on sales of semiconductors and in 1994 enjoyed total sales of
$10.3 billion. TI’s Semiconductor Group uses 90% of TI’s chipmaking capacity to
manufacture standardized chips that were considered commodity products. Differentiated
chips use the remaining 10% of TI’s capacity, but because there were no substitutes in the
market, TI was able to demand higher prices than it could for standard semiconductors.
TI uses both original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and electronics distributors
as their method of channel entry. Most medium to large sized OEMs purchase
semiconductors directly from manufacturers, such as TI, in order to negotiate lower
prices. Distributors could not provide much lower prices, but they were able to handle
other important details such as logistics, material flows, sales and servicing. These
services plus a wide variety of chips to choose from are attractive to smaller OEM’s.
By 1995, the electronics distribution industry’s consolidation left 7 or 8 powerful
competitors in control of the distribution market. This impacted the relationships between
semiconductor manufacturers and distributors, by placing increased buying power in the
hands of distributors and eroding the pricing power of semiconductor manufacturers.
Semiconductor prices often determined a distributor’s buying decisions, due to
the product’s commodity status. TI’s Semiconductor Group used forward pricing and
continuous price negotiations with distributors to determine the prices distributors would
pay. Forward pricing predicted semiconductor prices using the “product cost decreases
and yield improvements they would experience as their production volumes increased.”
To protect distributors, continuous price adjustments were also offered by semiconductor
manufacturers due to the price fluctuations caused by supply and demand in the market.
Distributors often held inventories and as the market price of semiconductors changed,
they would receive reimbursements from the manufacturer for any overvalued inventory.
Distributors had the advantage of being able to monitor semiconductor prices of
all major manufacturers by using their computer systems to continuously monitor the
prices of all chip manufacturers and then used this data to seek price matches.
John Szczsponik, director of North American Distribution of TI’s Semiconductor
Group, has noticed that the bigger distributors have become more active in the global
market, as they pursue sales in Europe and Asia. However, TI’s international distribution
channels were not subject to the same product manufacturing costs as its domestic
channels. Semiconductor production costs were higher in Europe than in North America
or Asia, and payment terms or schedules also differed. But international distributors
would often try to negotiate lower European prices comparable to North American or
Asian prices, without regard for the reasons why such differences existed.
These differences in regional prices pushed Arrow Electronics, the largest
semiconductor distributor in North America, to pressure chip manufacturers to set one
global price for each of their products. TI had to weigh the pros and cons of standardized
prices against the possibility that if they chose to continue their current pricing strategy,
the company also risked losing one of their largest distributors as an outlet for their chips.
Texas Instruments Pricing Project Charles Laffiteau
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1. What are the reasons the semiconductor market is global? Why is it so difficult to
create a FSA or CSA? Are there any differential advantages?
The case mentioned that semiconductors were used in most, if not all, electronic
devices in a wide variety and large number of different industries. In addition to the well
known electronics giants such as Sony, Nokia and H-P, there are also hundreds of
thousands of small, medium and large companies worldwide that purchase
semiconductors and install them in their products before they are delivered to business
and consumer customers dispersed all over the world. TI’s customers include over 100
large electronics manufacturers, approximately 1,400 medium sized electronics
companies and more than 150,000 small electronics firms as customers. The electronics
manufacturing industry’s pervasiveness and the wide range of applications for the use of
semiconductors by customers worldwide attracted a lot of companies to enter this market
thus leading to the development of a truly global semiconductor market.
Of the many different kinds of firm specific advantages (FSAs) that exist, the one
that is probably most fitting for semiconductor companies is the knowledge based
advantage. However, this advantage has been difficult to maintain for several reasons.
First of all, semiconductors chips have become a price sensitive commodity item, hence
firms are not willing to invest in the large budget R&D projects required to develop new
ones. Secondly, there are so many US and Japanese companies competing in this market
with massive amounts of R&D resources (capital and labor), that no one company has
thus far been able to create a sustainable competitive advantage. These organizations are
complex entities such that the companies’ advantages in particular areas effectively
cancel each other out when you consider the company as a whole (i.e. one company
might be really good at designing the product but not as good at manufacturing it whereas
another company might be good at manufacturing chips but poor at designing them. Thus
at the corporate level their advantages and weaknesses cancel each other out.)
Regarding country specific advantages (CSAs), it is important to note that the
semiconductor industry does not use any special resource that is scarce or rare and only
available in certain countries. For example the factor conditions of the US do not favor it
over those of Japan’s. It is important to note that the semiconductor industry does require
a relatively skilled workforce, but human resources can easily flow between countries.
With the advent of more sophisticated educational institutes globally, this is no longer an
advantage for the US. Secondly as we mentioned earlier this is a truly global market with
customers all around the world, therefore the demand conditions are not very different
between countries. Hence it is difficult to create a CSA in the semiconductor industry.
There are several advantages to having differentiated products in the
semiconductor industry. Differentiated products have higher margins and are not
susceptible to price wars which are both significant advantages in an industry whose
products have a history of price volatility. Increased supplier bargaining power with
respect to distributors and OEMs is another plus since there are no substitute products
available. Finally with a differentiated product, that uses lower power or runs at a higher
speed, the company would gain market share when customers switched to TI’s chips
because of these features. Having more differentiated products would thus provide TI
with bigger margins and increase TI’s pricing power as well as its market share.
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2. What drives the need for global pricing? Any risk of gray markets? Any options
apart from global pricing?
With the increase in international distributors that sell globally, exposure to
semiconductor price fluctuations has become a prominent issue. Regional semiconductor
prices vary for the logical reason that there are differing costs of production in certain
regions. According to the case in the text, the cost of manufacturing semiconductors is
much higher in Europe than in North America or Asia1. Thus, prices from manufacturers
in Europe are higher than those from other regions. The issue of global pricing arose at as
an outgrowth of distributors’ ability to easily track the prices set by all semiconductor
manufacturers. Distributors used their price tracking data to negotiate lower prices from
different manufacturers for standardized chips because these were basically a commodity
product. Distributors then began pressuring manufacturers to set one global price in
order to lower their costs and also in an attempt to simplify the forecasting techniques
used to determine how many semiconductors distributors would need to purchase to meet
demand. Manufacturers on the other hand were hesitant to set one global price because of
the differing production costs in each country. They could not maximize their profits by
selling some semiconductors at prices lower than production costs in some regions. Also,
with a lower global price, manufacturers would not be as inclined to offer distributors
price adjustments (such as reimbursements on overvalued inventory) as they had before.
However, with standardized global pricing, the risk of gray markets developing
for some manufacturers’ semiconductor chips would be diminished. Gray markets
develop when “genuine branded goods are sold outside an authorized sales territory at
prices lower than those charged by authorized sales territories.”2 For example, if the same
product is priced at different levels in different markets, often the product is purchased in
the lower price market and then resold at the lower price in markets where the authorized
prices are higher.3 Without standardized global pricing, the semiconductor industry runs
the risk of gray markets developing in areas where semiconductors purchased in lower
cost regions such as the US or Asia, are resold in higher cost regions like the European
markets that quote higher prices for semiconductors. With standardized global pricing, it
would be much less likely for lower cost chips to be resold since all regions’ prices would
be the same. Semiconductor manufacturers, like TI, can try to prevent gray markets from
developing and continue to quote different regional prices by using different numbers on
semiconductors from each region. This would help distributors and manufacturers alike
distinguish TI chips sold legally in their markets from those available on the gray market.
TI has only a few pricing strategy options open to them. First, they can set a
standard price for all of their semiconductors. To remain profitable with this strategy,
however, they would have to raise the standard price enough so that their more expensive
production regions, such as Europe, can still achieve marginal profit over costs. This
1 Johny K. Johannson Global Marketing: Foreign Entry, Local Marketing & Global Management New
York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin (2006):603 2 Definition of Gray Market: Business Dictionary.com
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/gray-market.html 3 Jagdish Hiray. “All about Business and Management”
http://businessmanagement.wordpress.com/2007/07/13/gray-market/
Texas Instruments Pricing Project Charles Laffiteau
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option would satisfy distributors desire to obtain price simplification, but will also make
semiconductors on average more expensive. The second option would be for TI to keep
their pricing strategy as is, by pricing and numbering their semiconductors differently
depending on the region in which they were produced.
A third option would involve TI combining a global pricing strategy with their
current regional pricing. Since TI manufactures “standard” semiconductors and
“differentiated” semiconductors, TI could focus standard chip production in lower cost
regions in order to establish a profitable global price for chips. Standardized commodity
chips make up 90% of production, so the majority of TI’s chips would be bundled into
the standardized global price group. Differentiated semiconductors that command a
higher premium price could then be produced in more expensive regions. This strategy
would allow differentiated semiconductors that are more expensive to fabricate in Europe
to be priced at a premium that would account for Europe’s increased production costs.
3. Who has most power in the value chain from manufacturers through distributors
to customers?
The customer has the most power and the manufacturer has the least power in the
global semiconductor value chain because it is a “buyer driven global commodity chain”.
Buyer-driven commodity chains include “those industries in which large retailers, brand-
name merchandisers, and trading companies play the pivotal role in setting up
decentralized production networks in a variety of exporting countries, typically located in
the Third World.”4 Arrow has become the #1 market leader in semiconductor sales by
distributors largely through its superior logistics capabilities and through acquisitions,
(rather than organic growth) as has its largest competitor Avnet, which has the second
largest market share in the global semiconductor distributor market. But because large
semiconductor distributors like Arrow and Avnet have dealings with virtually all of the
semiconductor manufacturers, they also have access to the most up to date pricing
information for all of TI’s semiconductor competitors’ chips..
As Mr. Szczsponick of TI notes in the case study “through our negotiations with
distributors, we capture masses of data regarding the pricing levels of our competitors
and the market performance of our products. These data are critical to our ability to set
prices.”5 Given their ability to obtain semiconductor chips from a wide variety of
manufacturers and how critical distributors’ access to other manufacturers’ pricing and
product performance information is to manufacturers like TI, the distributor has more
leverage in setting prices for different types of chips than the manufacturer who actually
makes the semiconductor chips has. While the distributors depend on manufacturers to
provide them with products they can sell to their OEM customers, manufacturers are in a
weaker position relative to setting prices for their semiconductors because an unhappy
distributor can also steer its OEM customers to purchase chips made by TI’s competitors.
This loss of negotiating power in determining prices to ensure a higher return on
its semiconductor development and manufacturing investments explains why “Managers
4 Gary Geref. “Commodity Chains and Regional Divisions of Labor in East Asia.” In The Four Asian
Tigers: Economic Development and the Global Political Economy, edited by Eun Mee Kim. San Diego:
Academic Press (1998). 5 Johannson : 602
Texas Instruments Pricing Project Charles Laffiteau
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at TI believed that higher returns were possible only by developing more successful
differentiated semiconductors.”6 Unlike standardized semiconductors, differentiated
semiconductors had capabilities that allowed manufacturers to set higher prices for them
because there were no readily available substitutes for them. So without the threat of chip
substitution in their corner, both distributors and OEM customers that use these chips in
their products have much less power in this segment of the semiconductor value chain.
In buyer-driven global commodity chains, power resides downstream from
manufacturing, in the hands of the retailers, brand-name firms, marketers, and advertisers
who “add value” to what otherwise would be just a toy, a shoe, a grape, or a spark plug.
Flexible specialization and the decentralization of suppliers have created new sources of
power for these downstream nodes, which control “the means of consumption” through
advertising, marketing, retailing, and brand-name product identification.7
Similar to the distributor (who can steer customers to a different manufacturer of
standardized chips) in global commodity value chains, the OEM customer (who provides
the end product for businesses and consumers) has more negotiating leverage than the
semiconductor manufacturer because they can always choose to purchase standardized
semiconductor chips from another manufacturer. These OEM customers also have more
power in this global commodity value chain than distributors, because they can also elect
to buy their chips from a different distributor, or in some cases negotiate the prices they
pay directly with the semiconductor manufacturer. Their ability to substitute other chips
coupled with their control of the production, marketing and retail distribution of their
products, gives the OEM customer the most leverage and power in this value chain.
4. How would you try to manage the global pricing process - by formalization of the
pricing process, economic controls, centralization, or informal persuasion? Any
other options?
TI’s distributors are pushing for a global pricing strategy that would allow them to
charge all their customers the same price regardless of where the product is being bought.
In order to analyze this question, we need to understand the nature of the semiconductor
industry and TI's specific role in it. As was mentioned in the case, most of the
semiconductor industry’s chips were considered commodity products. There was a high
level of standardization in the product (i.e. the product was not adapted to local needs)
and therefore a multi-country or regional marketing approach was not required. The price
differentials across the markets represented the difference in manufacturing costs and the
different price elasticities of the different customers. Furthermore, we can assume that
TI's strength of local resources in the global markets was relatively low. While TI’s level
of resources to manufacture the product was relatively high but the level of resources to
market, manage and negotiate prices with a multitude of smaller customers was low. This
was why price negotiation calls were referred back to Szczsponik's team at headquarters.
Based on the above analysis, we determined that because the level of marketing
standardization was high and the strength of local resources was low, of the 4 options
presented, the best option for TI was centralization. Centralization is where headquarters
6 Johannson : 600
7 Ken Conca “Consumption and Environment in a Global Economy Global Environmental Politics Vol. 1
Issue 3 (2001): 54
Texas Instruments Pricing Project Charles Laffiteau
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sets limits for local prices (i.e. a range between a maximum and a minimum price.) This
options still gives distributors some leeway to set different prices based on country
differences (manufacturing costs etc.) With this approach, a price differential will still
exist between the countries as it does currently, but this price differential would be
reduced to a level such that it would not be profitable to buy the product in a lower price
country and ship it to the higher priced country to sell it. TI would also need to explain to
the distributors that the small price differential is primarily reflective of the difference in
manufacturing costs. Briefly looking at the other options, we felt economic controls
would not work because rationing the product would require a lot of resources to
constantly monitor and recalibrate the number of chips being made available in each
market. Formalization was already being used to an extent with their forward pricing
strategy and would not be helpful because the price differential was not due to different
strategies in planning and implementing pricing decisions but due to real manufacturing
cost differences. Finally informal coordination wasn’t needed since local autonomy in the
different markets is not as critical or important in this industry as it is in other industries.
Centralization is the best option if it is realistically implemented. However, it
remains questionable whether or not the price differential after centralization will be
reduced to a reasonable enough level that it would be acceptable to the distributor.
Therefore the centralization approach that we're recommending involves a significant
amount of internal reorganization. The case mentioned that TI sells standardized products
as well as a variety of differentiated premium products. TI should look all of these chips
costs and consider manufacturing the most price sensitive products in their lowest cost
countries and shift all the fabrication of the differentiated products to TI’s higher cost
plant locations. This reorganization would involve one time relocation costs of capital
(machinery possibly) and labor (people who were experts in these product.), but the long
term benefits are high. The benefits include a standardized global price for each type of
chip since most chips will be produced at one or two manufacturing plants. Secondly,
moving all the resources related to specific chips to one or two locations increases
collaboration and results in both a higher quality and lower cost product. TI can also
reduce the hassle associated with renegotiating prices with distributors. As mentioned
earlier, this approach requires a significant one time reorganization investment so TI
would have to do a detailed cost analysis to see if this also makes sense in the long run.
TI’s situation since 2007
The semiconductor industry actually consists of 2 parts: first designing the chips
and secondly manufacturing the chips. In order to compete more effectively on costs,
chip manufacturers are constantly working on the latest process node. A process node is
the blueprint for how to manufacture chips more efficiently since making them is a very
expensive process and quality semiconductor chip yields are extremely important. In
2007, TI announced that it would exit the process development race and outsource most
of its chip manufacturing to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).8
8 Mark LaPedus Electronics Supply& Manufacturing http://maltiel-
consulting.com/Texas_Instruments_drop_digital_logic_process_development_go_fabless_maltiel_semicon
dcutor.htm
Texas Instruments Pricing Project Charles Laffiteau
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This was a major outsourcing move for one of the leading chip manufacturer to take in
the semiconductor industry that has since led many other chip producers to follow suit. TI
said that in the future it will focus on designing chips and fabricating differentiated chips,
leaving the manufacturing of standardized chips to TSMC and other foundries (factories).
In doing so, TI was merely following in the footsteps of many other former
manufacturers of high value computer, electronics and telecom equipment products who
began to sell their factories and outsource the manufacturing to more efficient ‘contract
manufacturers’ during the latter half of the 1990’s. Once companies like TSMC decided
to focus on fabricating rather than designing chips, they developed a competitive
manufacturing advantage over semiconductor companies that both designed and
fabricated their own chips. But this was a prescient decision by TI in another respect that
may have been anticipated by TI when it decided to focus on designing rather than
fabricating chips. While the global economic downturn has negatively impacted TI’s
sales and profits, TI’s standardized chip manufacturers are suffering even more serious
consequences. “Cheng Cheng-mount, a Taipei based economist with Citibank estimates
TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, is running at 35% of capacity.” 9
TI is currently at parity with Toshiba as the #3 and #4 semiconductor designers
and or manufacturers in terms of both sales and market share, with each having roughly
$11.5 billion in 2008 sales & 4.3% market shares. TI’s sales and market share have been
in decline since 2006 when TI had sales revenue of $12.6 billion and a 4.8% share of the
global market for semiconductors. Most of this decline can be traced either to TI’s
decision to stop making standardized chips and or to the worldwide economic downturn
that has affected the entire semiconductor industry. Total semiconductor industry sales
revenue is projected to decline by another 19.6% in 2009 to US$199.2 billion. While
some recovery might begin slowly in the second half of 2009, it will probably be 2012
before semiconductor revenues again reach the levels achieved in 2007. “Declining
confidence levels, resulting from recent shocks and increased uncertainty about the
future, will lead to more conservative spending practices even after liquidity improves
and the economic recovery is well underway. Assuming that governments and central
banks around the world continue the aggressive fiscal and monetary actions that they
began to take in 2008 and that these actions are largely successful, growth in 2010 is
forecasted to be modest, at 11.8%, followed by 9.7% in 2011 and 8.8% in 2012.”10
Conclusions
The international marketing management learning experience that our team derived from
the TI case was a multi-faceted one involving the often conflicting business marketing
agendas of 2 separate companies that are also very dependent on each other. As a result,
this case study forced us to juggle the competing agendas of two different independent
companies that were both engaged in serving the needs of OEM customers in sometimes
overlapping segments of a single “buyer driven” global value chain, which included both
price sensitive commodity products and specialized custom products. This made the task
of developing a win-win solution for both companies an extremely difficult proposition.
9 The Economist “Mirror, mirror on the wall” (February 14,2009):52
10 Global Semiconductor Product Market Forecast - Help Wanted: Spenders and Lenders (Feb.2009)
Texas Instruments Pricing Project Charles Laffiteau
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References
Conca, Ken “Consumption and Environment in a Global Economy Global Environmental
Politics Vol. 1 Issue 3 (2001): 53-71
Definition of Gray Market: Business Dictionary.com
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/gray-market.html
The Economist “Mirror, mirror on the wall” (February 14, 2009):52-53
Geref., Gary. “Commodity Chains and Regional Divisions of Labor in East Asia.” In The
Four Asian Tigers: Economic Development and the Global Political Economy, edited by
Eun Mee Kim. San Diego: Academic Press (1998).
Global Semiconductor Product Market Forecast - Help Wanted: Spenders and Lenders (Feb.2009)
Hiray, Jagdish “All about Business and Management”
http://businessmanagement.wordpress.com/2007/07/13/gray-market/
Johansson, Johny K. Global Marketing: Foreign Entry, Local Marketing & Global
Management New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin (2006)
LaPedus, Mark Electronics Supply& Manufacturing article available at http://maltiel-
consulting.com/Texas_Instruments_drop_digital_logic_process_development_go_fabless
_maltiel_semicondcutor.htm