The target costing process begins with the customer. Customer desires about functionality,
Quality,and, most important,price drive the analysis. Habing a clear understanding of customer neesds is critical .There are likely to be functional requirement that must be present to meet customer needs. Further, the customer may be unwilling to trade off functional requirements for lower price or lower quality. Knowing customer requirements also means understanding competitor offerings.Consumers do not operate in a vacuum. They demand product characteristics based on what is available in the marketplace, If competitor offers a higher quality product with a similar functionality at a lower price, then companies attempt to reengineer their processes to meet that competition.
COMPONENTS OF THE TARGET COSTING PROCESS
At the most basic level the desired target cost is the cost of resource that should be consumed to create a product that can be sold at a target price. The target costing process begins with identifying the target price . The target price is determined through interaction with consmers. However,management must determine an acceptable profit margin for the product to compute the desired target cost. That profit margin, although not considered in detail here, is a function of the type of business and the demands of the marketplace. The basic target cost formula is as follows: