Marketing objectives are internal factors that affect pricing decision. Before setting price, the firm must decide on its price strategy for their goods. If the company has already selected its target market and positioning attentively, then its marketing mix strategy, with price, will be comparatively straightforward. For example, when Toyota developed its Lexus brand to compete with European luxurious cars in the higher-income segment, and it required charging a high price. Thus, pricing strategy is mainly determined by decisions on market positioning.

Meanwhile, the company may search further general or specific objectives. General objectives include survival, market share leadership, current profit maximization, and product quality leadership. At a more specific level, a company can set prices low to avoid competition from entering the market or set prices at their competitors’ level to stabilize the market. It can set prices to keep the support and faithfulness of resellers or to stay away from government intervention. Prices can be cut down temporarily to create excitement for existing products or to draw more customers into the retail stores. Or one product may be priced to help the sales of other products in the company’s product line. Therefore, pricing may play a vital role in helping to accomplish the objectives of company at many levels.

Several companies may use current profit maximization as their pricing objective. They estimate what demand and cost of products will be at different prices and choose the price that will generate the maximum cash flow, current profit, or return on investment. Other businesses want to obtain market share leadership. To become a market share leader, these firms set low prices as much as possible.

A business might decide that it desires to attain product quality leadership. It normally calls for charging a high price to cover higher quality performance and the high cost of research and development. For example, Caterpillar brand charges 20% to 30% more than its competitors for selling heavy construction equipment based on higher product and service quality. A.T. Cross does not sell just ballpoint pens- you can find those from Bic. Instead, it sells fine writing instrument in models bearing names like Classic Century, Morph, Ion, ATX, Matrix, and Radiance, selling for prices as high as approximately $400.

Non-profit and public organizations may adopt many other pricing objectives. A university seeks for partial cost recovery, knowing that it must rely on public grants and public grants to cover the outstanding costs. A trustee hospital may aim for full cost recovery in its pricing decision. A non-profit theater business may price its production to fill the maximum number of theater seats. A social agency may set a social price geared to accommodate the varying income of different customers.