Why CMOs Should Have a Seat at the Pricing Table

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BoF’s latest knowledge report, The CMO Brief: What’s Driving Results in Fashion and Beauty Marketing — in partnership with Ekimetrics — argues why chief marketing officers should be involved in pricing as brand guardians and advocates for the consumer mindset.

Over 70 percent of consumers say price is a major factor influencing their perception of value, according to McKinsey’s State of the Consumer 2025 report. However, 60 percent also associate sudden or excessive price increases with brand opportunism — a reputational risk that cannot be ignored.

Pricing requires more than just financial modelling or cost-based logic. Instead, a multidimensional approach that incorporates a deep understanding of how price impacts brand perception and diverse data points — from competitive benchmarks to customer sentiment — should be adopted.

This is where the active involvement of the CMO and the wider marketing function can positively impact pricing decisions, in part because it speaks to their role in communicating value with clarity and consistency across channels.

This section of the knowledge report will make the case for placing CMOs at the centre of pricing strategies, as price-sensitive customers question increases that far outpace inflation, which in turn can impact brand equity.

Convictions

Data Sharing Aligns Teams Around Pricing Decisions

• The inability to align teams around pricing decisions, which naturally feed into wider business targets, is partly due to opacity within or across operating systems.
• Only 31 percent of marketers are fully satisfied with their ability to unify customer data sources, according to a 2024 Salesforce report.
• Data silos block holistic pricing decisions, and balancing brand perception and price elasticity is critical to avoid alienating your customer base. Price and promotion can account for a large proportion of incremental impact for brands, so aligning around these decisions to avoid error is critical.

CMOs Understand Consumer Price-Sensitivity

• While CMOs may not own pricing strategies, an opportunity exists for them to advocate for the customer in pricing discussions and decision-making.
• Analysis from retail intelligence firm IHL Group estimates that retailers worldwide lost $1.77 trillion in revenue in 2023 due to inventory imbalances.
• This data suggests that the tools and metrics used to determine product pricing, and forecast consumer acceptance of that pricing, are not performing effectively.
• “The CMO’s role in this equation is to be the voice of the customer. They need to be driving that feedback into that equation,” says Holden Bale, global chief strategy officer at Merkle.
• What’s more, consumers also demand greater transparency from brands. While brands might want to quietly raise prices, other brands are leaning into the openness as a marketing opportunity to demonstrate transparency with customers.
• E.l.f. Beauty, for instance, shared these intended price hikes in a post on the brand’s Instagram, explaining: “Not gonna lie, inflation and tariffs are hitting us hard,” accompanied by emojis of a downward trend.

Solutions

Understand Your Brand’s Price Elasticity

• While inflationary pressures and market realities make price increases inevitable, not all products respond to pricing changes equally. Price elasticity — the degree to which demand changes in response to price — is a critical consideration in fashion and beauty, where consumers are highly attuned to both value and perception.
• Entry-level items, such as basics or bestsellers, often anchor price perception and carry high elasticity — even a modest increase can trigger a drop in demand. These items should be protected in order to maintain accessibility and traffic.
• “Different products and different customer segments respond differently to pricing changes. By taking a more granular approach, companies can tailor their pricing strategies to the elasticity of individual items or categories,” says Sona Abaryan, partner at Ekimetrics. “This is how brands can ensure price adjustments are both effective and sustainable.”

Prioritise Elevation to Drive Price Changes

• For The State of Fashion 2025 report, BoF spoke to Ralph Lauren’s CEO Patrice Louvet, who shared that brand elevation takes place across storytelling, product and the shopping experience. The outcome, Louvet says, is the ability to price.
• When thinking about communicating and demonstrating “value” to customers more broadly, price isn’t everything. A June 2025 report from the Deloitte Consumer Industry Center found that between 10 and 40 percent of value perceptions arise from factors other than price.
• For some marketing leaders, their insight into the products that generate buzz and traction can be leveraged when decisions around discounts are made — a critical part of brand perception and elevation.
• Still, without the right internal decision-making frameworks, brands risk chasing short-term results at the expense of long-term brand equity. This is where marketing leaders must step in.
• Customer-centric data offers insight into consumer psychology and behaviour, helping to drive decision-making around pricing, while avoiding alienating consumers. Brands must understand their price elasticity, the power of their brand, and the power of prioritising their valuable customer base.

This is a sponsored feature paid for by Ekimetrics as part of a BoF partnership.