Most manufacturing firms today realise that licensing is a powerful means to achieve their strategic goals. As an increasing number of industries experience globalisation, large as well as small firms are contemplating licensing in their wish to reach new markets or to reduce manufacturing costs. Among the numerous questions raised by licensing in the different fields of management, the technology pricing issue figures prominently. Previous research on technology pricing has essentially focused on the possible existence of economic drivers, however, the strategic dimension of licensing has been neglected. A better understanding of the pricing policy of firms implies taking their licensing rationales into consideration. This is what we intend to do in the present paper. After reviewing the literature that provides a framework for most research on technology pricing, we will present an analysis of the licensing motives leading to the identification of three generic licensing strategies and to the formulation of some hypotheses. It will be seen that our approach is not contradictory to previous ones, particularly Contractor's, but rather builds on them by identifying the conditions under which they are valid. [References: 19]
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