A teaching exercise in product costing and price setting — The case of the letter, the phone call and the mismatched drivers

Students are challenged to identify cost drivers and price drivers in two major public utilities—the post office and telecommunications. The exercise is designed to be positive rather than normative by encouraging students to suggest reasons for conflicting pricing practices in different industries through comparison of this matched pair. Insight is gained into the contingent nature of management accounting practice which is uneven across firms and industries. It provides a tangible example of how historical and social factors impact on costing and pricing issues which might often appear to be purely technical matters. Experience of using the exercise is discussed and attention is drawn to the type of teaching resource material which can be developed to meet the particular needs of undergraduate students with limited industrial experience. The case spans the gap between highly prescriptive computational exercises (using either traditional costing techniques, or innovations such as Activity Based Costing (ABC)), and abstract discussions of the impact of social and historical conditions on management accounting practice.