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TARGET COSTING: AN INTEGRATIVE MANAGEMENT PROCESS RE: CURRENT ISSUES IN ACCOUNTING In the traditional approach of cost management, the product costs are often not assessed until later during the product development cycle. Target costing, a technique developed by the Japanese follows a fundamentally different approach. The many U.S companies that rushed in to follow the Japanese technique have not been successful in doing so. This is because they overlooked the underlying processes that support and reinforce these techniques (Kato, 1995). Target costing has three main goals, • Orienting products to customer affordability and market pricing • Target product costs as an independent variable • Aggressively working to achieving target cost during product and process development,(Kenneth, 1999). Target costing holds a definite promise as it is future oriented, makes designers focuses on the cost implications of their design and helps to evaluate profitability even before the product is made (Kato, 1995). TARGET COSTING PROCESS: The target costing process has three major activities, • Price projections • Profit plans • Manufacturing experience (Kato, 1995). Price Projections: Many factors like product concept, at