{"id":2144,"date":"2014-01-24T16:03:59","date_gmt":"2014-01-24T21:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wabash.edu\/fyi\/?p=2144"},"modified":"2025-12-09T13:56:57","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T18:56:57","slug":"gms-davlin-85-talks-pricing-with-econ-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2014\/01\/24\/gms-davlin-85-talks-pricing-with-econ-students\/","title":{"rendered":"GM’s Davlin ’85 Talks Pricing with Econ Students"},"content":{"rendered":"

Howard W. Hewitt<\/em> – Jim Davlin \u201985 told a large group of Wabash students Friday that pricing any consumer product has many variables, some obvious and some less so.<\/p>\n

\"Davlin<\/a>
Davlin ’85 talking with students after his lecture.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Davlin, a Wabash Economics major, is now General Motors Vice President Finance\/Treasure. The Wabash Trustee used the stops of his career to illustrate the differences. Before joining GM, Davlin had worked at consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble, Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals, and John Deere.<\/p>\n

Even though he is at a corporate level now, he has had \u201ca lot of line development for products.\u201d He used the example of dish soap or laundry detergent to start his talk. The components of cost, competition, are relatively simple, he suggested, but packaging can also have a huge impact with consumer goods.<\/p>\n

While at Lilly, he learned pricing of drugs is very different. \u201cThe insurance market clouds the cost of health care,\u201d he said. \u201cThe raw materials cost very little to make one pill. What\u2019s expensive is all the cost that went into the drug (research) to make it successful. One in 10,000 compounds will be a successful drug.\u201d<\/p>\n

The market is fickle. Drugs can greatly aid one healthcare affliction while causing other patients side effects. The customer, Davlin said, must weigh price against result in unique ways no at all like buying dish soap.<\/p>\n

\"Davlin<\/a>
Davlin ’85 talking about GM finance.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Davlin\u2019s time at John Deere gave him a new-found respect for agriculture. \u201cFarmers are dramatically underestimated for their financial savvy,\u201d he said. He explained farmers will weigh the benefit and gain of buying new equipment, its impact on harvest, prices, and labor in determining what they will pay for a new tractor.<\/p>\n

He jokingly noted that most of the young men probably wanted to hear more about selling Cadillacs than tractors so he used Cadillac\u2019s 2013 introduction of its new ATS as an example. He explained how the company tried to position the vehicle in comparison to a similar BMW.<\/p>\n

But the other factor for pricing in the auto industry isn\u2019t just market demand, raw materials cost, and the other components. \u00a0\u00a0Auto manufacturers also must consider how a vehicle price-wise fits in its own lineup.<\/p>\n

Students peppered the GM executive with questions for the remainder of the hour. He talked about targeted advertising, GM\u2019s downsizing, and the company\u2019s substantial financial turnaround since 2008.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Howard W. Hewitt – Jim Davlin \u201985 told a large group of Wabash students Friday that pricing any consumer product has many variables, some obvious and some less so. Davlin, a Wabash […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2014\/01\/DAvlin375.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3760,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2144\/revisions\/3760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}