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Pricing Dilema - Lbs vs Insead Mba

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Pricing Strategy – A Pricing Dilemma Why is the price of a 1-year INSEAD MBA £49,000 while the price of a higher-ranked 2-year London Business School MBA is £57,000? vs. Kunal S. Shah, MBA 2012 April 6, 2012 Introduction The MBA program was introduced for the first time in the United States in the early 20 th Century and was modeled on the basis of the prevalent 2-year graduate programs. It gained significant traction after its inception, however was later criticized for its lack of practical relevance. It was often said that “MBA was too academic, too theoretical and divorced from real-life business practice.”1 Business school subsequently responded by improving quality of teaching and content. The first year was dedicated to …show more content…

However, given the theory of economies of scale, we can assume that INSEAD’s costs per year related to students are approximately 1.5 than that of LBS. Specifically, we could adjust “Staff costs”, “External Teaching Costs” and “Programme catering and accommodation” by this factor. Total adjustment: based on these two changes results shows that INSEAD incurs additional expense of £58 m. However, due to the larger class size, this cost gets spread across a larger student base. As a result, when LBS’s total cost is normalized to assume the same student volume as that of INSEAD, LBS’s total adjusted cost can be estimated to be £77 m or 42% greater than that of INSEAD. In summary, the lower price per year at LBS cannot be explained due to potential differences in cost, as the adjusted cost of offering the MBA program at LBS is an estimated 42% greater than that offered at INSEAD. The Role of Consumer Behavior As discussed above, given costs cannot explain the variance in price, another explanation to this dilemma could be found on the consumer or demand side. More specifically, the willingness to pay for an MBA degree, whether 1 or 2 years maybe a certain level that the potential ‘market’ may not be willing to comprise on. Pricing Dilemma – LBS vs. INSEAD Page 3 To assess this, it may be worth analyzing the

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