Global Classroom: BUM1123 Mathematics for Management with a lecturer from Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences at Humber College, Toronto, Ontario Canada
The Global Classroom session was organised by Dr Nor Alisa Mohd Damanhuri, the instructor of the course with over 100 students participating. Nurul Atikah, one of the participants commented “The global classroom promotes intercultural learning through online collaboration between teachers and students who live in different countries and locations". According to Shafinaz “It is a good exposure for students to learn about the pricing strategy in the ecommerce and retail industries in Canada with the native speaker”.
Professor Joshua discussed excellent marketing strategies in addition to the mathematical concepts of markup and markdown. Pricing is a balancing act, one of the most difficult issues each new business owner must deal with is how to competitively price their items. This is especially true for handmade, custom items where pricing is less predetermined. In Canada, seasonality in retail is important. Examples of seasonality are holiday seasons, thanksgiving and Christmas season, spring/summer/autumn/winter season and back to school season. Retailers have to deal with seasonality in the right way through planning in advance on cash flow, inventory, seasonal merchandise, manpower and the changes in seasonality.
He also discussed the pricing strategy used by many Canadian stores & retailers, who lower prices to get rid of excess stock every season. It involves reducing a product's price to clear out extra stock, make room for new stock, or boost sales. By employing markdown pricing, businesses may efficiently manage their inventory, increase sales, and increase profitability. The bottom lines of merchants will significantly benefit from wise markdown techniques.
We hope that this event can be repeated in the future and that we can learn more about the marketing and pricing strategies across borders and cultures.
Reported by: Dr. Nor Alisa binti Mohd Damanhuri