Pricing Analyst: Career and Salary Facts
Explore the career requirements for pricing analysts. Get the facts about job duties, education and certification requirements, and average salary to determine if this is the right career for you.
What Does a Pricing Analyst Do?
A pricing analyst performs financial analyses in order to determine the ideal selling price for a company's goods and services, in a way that enables the company to boost sales, retain clients and target new customers. This requires careful monitoring of trends in the market, as well as the company's current and predicted revenue and expenditures. Based on their findings, pricing analysts prepare written reports for management teams that make the final decision about pricing strategies.
The following chart gives you an overview about entering this field.
<table border="1"><tr><td><b>Degree Required</b></td><td>Bachelor's degree required, master's degree common</td></tr>
<tr><td><b>Education Field of Study</b></td><td> Accounting, business, finance</td></tr>
<tr><td><b>Skills Required</b></td><td>Self-motivation, ability to multitask, mastery of math, data analysis and strategy, strong written and verbal communication skills</td></tr>
<tr><td><b>Key Responsibilities</b></td><td>Obtain estimates for labor and materials, analyze proposals, build pricing models, implement market research, determine costs</td></tr>
<tr><td> <b>Job Outlook (2020-2030)</b> </td><td> 6%* (for all financial analysts)*</td></tr>
<tr><td><b>Mean Salary (2021)</b></td><td>$65,186 (for all competitive pricing analysts)**</td></tr>
</table><p><i>Source: *U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, **Salary.com</i>
</p><h3 id="section---WhatIsAPricingAnalyst">What Is a Pricing Analyst?</h3><p>A pricing analyst helps a company by analyzing data to determine the correct value for products and services in order to boost sales, retain clients and target new customers. As a pricing analyst, you obtain estimates for labor and materials, analyze proposals, build pricing models, implement market research and then determine costs. You need to display mastery of math, data analysis and strategy. You need to be a self-motivated individual who can multitask. Strong written and verbal communication skills, plus the ability to work with a team, may also be helpful attributes in this field.
</p><h3 id="section---WhatTypeOfEducationOrTrainingDoINeed">What Type of Education or Training Do I Need?</h3><p>According to postings on <i>Monster.com</i> and other job boards in 2015, employers may require applicants to have at least a bachelor's degree in a field related to accounting, business or finance. You may be competing against candidates with an advanced degree, such as a Master of Business Administration. Your competitors may be Certified Public Accountants or hold other professional credentials. They may also have several years of experience in pricing analysis or the field of employment. Depending on your industry, there may be specific software that you need to know in order to assess and process pricing, ordering, billing and shipping information.
</p><h3 id="section---IsCertificationAvailable">Is Certification Available?</h3><p>You can voluntarily pursue the Certified Pricing Professional designation through the Professional Pricing Society (PPS). Qualified candidates have already completed a series of approved courses or workshops and must then pass an exam to earn the credential. Members of PPS who are not certified still have access to a number of professional pricing analyst resources, such as seminars, trend reports, articles and networking opportunities.
</p><h3 id="section---WhatWillIEarn">What Will I Earn?</h3><p>The mean income for a competitive pricing analyst in the United States was $65,186 per year as of 2021, according to <i>Salary.com.</i> Meanwhile, the source showed that a competitive pricing manager earns a median salary of $95,524 as of the same year. For a more industry-subjective comparison, <i>Salary.com</i> revealed that a retail pricing analyst reportedly earned a mean annual income of $67,468.
</p><h3 id="section---WhatAreSomeRelatedAlternativeCareers">What Are Some Related Alternative Careers?</h3><p>There are several possible areas of financial analysis in which you could specialize. Instead of focusing on pricing analysis, you could become a risk analyst. In this position, you would develop investment strategies for companies, with an eye toward protecting against uncertainty in the market, such as currency fluctuations. You usually need to have a bachelor's degree for this job. Another possibility is a position as a ratings analyst. Ratings analysts assess an organization's ability to pay back its debts, including bonds. They prepare reports that are used by management teams to give the organization a risk rating. The minimum educational requirement for this job is also a bachelor's degree.</p>