Marketability

“ The nearby market plan is greatly to be recommended because you can keep in touch with your selling concern, build up a line of desirable goods and promote its sale by advertising.
Of course you can get more money for your goods if you have time and the opportunity to sell direct to the consumers. You will of necessity have to sell cheaper to the grocers because they too must make their profit. Marketing direct to the consumer has a special appeal to many people. ”

“ It must create a demand for the product through advertising, open new fields, study the demands of the trade and the products of competitors, ascertain as far as may be the possibilities of marketing new products, and, above all, sell goods at a profit. ”

“ Think of the tremendous buying power that we have. It would be absolutely impossible for you to give trading stamps of your own and have any chance with competition. Now, I don't think for a moment that you are not as keen a business man as the next fellow, but the big concerns realize that it is specialization that means success, and we have simply specialized in this one branch of marketing to help you fellows do something which you could do yourselves, but not nearly so effectively or cheaply as we can. ”

“ In each trade there is an established course of business; and, however obvious may be some better course, the difficulties of altering the settled routine are, if not insurmountable, still very considerable. Take, for instance, the commerce of literature. In days when a letter cost a shilling and no book-post existed, there grew up an organization of wholesalers and retailers to convey books from publishers to readers: a profit being reaped by each distributing agent, primary and secondary. ”

“ The American marketplace is the great engine of our free enterprise system. Ever-expanding as it evolves in response to consumer needs and desires, it inspires technological innovation and the development of new products and services, and it rewards efficiency and productivity. ”

“ Under the present system of commercialism the one object, and the complete justification, of producing any article is, that it can be made either by its intrinsic value, or by the fictitious value put upon it by advertisement, to sell with a sufficient profit to the manufacturer. ”

“ The reason is that an investment in enough advertising space to make any commodity known nationally requires a considerable outlay of money, besides a well-developed selling organization to coöperate with the advertising, and harvest its results. ”

“ If from investigation it appears that there is a market for one’s goods in any section or universally, that quality and prices can be such as to make competition favorable, that the market can be enlarged, or should there be none that one can be created, and a determination is therefore formed to enter export trade, the next question is how the goods shall be sold. ”

“ It is the consensus of opinion of economists and of many of the most important agencies of government that the public interest is served by the gathering and dissemination, in the widest possible manner, of information with respect to the production and distribution, cost and prices in actual sales, of market commodities because the making available of such information tends to stabilize trade and industry, to produce fairer price levels and to avoid the waste which inevitably attends the unintelligent conduct of economic enterprise. ”

“ Increasing competition in the marketplace spurs business and industry to improve both the quality and price of their products and services. This in turn enables consumers to get more out of their buying dollar. At the same time, the demand for greater innovation and productivity helps to create jobs. ”

“ A large force of experienced buyers are constantly employed, who visit the world's markets at regular intervals in search of new goods. The aim is to save all intermediate profit, by buying direct from the makers, making direct connection between the manufacturer and consumer, and thus getting as near as possible to the actual cost of production. ”

“ At all events, we mailed a few letters to customers explaining the matter, and a business on this basis was commenced and quickly grew to large proportions.
This fact made it dangerous, for the larger the business the greater the risk. We had to continually have an interest in the market either on one side or the other, and if the business was large our interest must be in proportion.
For some time the business was most satisfactory. My judgment of the market was correct, our customers were well pleased, and we made good profits. ”

“ Sales on a large scale are accompanied, it seems, by differences of method as well as differences of quantity. Some of the attendant advantages are matters of common knowledge. The big shops, having ample capital, can get the best locations. This is a form of advertising, productive of good will. The big shops can practice economies impossible for small ones. In particular, they can make their purchases in bulk and hence at cheaper prices. The big shops acquire a prestige that makes customers eager to buy of them. ”

“ Not only have these markets proved beneficial to the consumers generally, but the market men are unanimous as to their advantage, for they afford a ready and inexpensive means of doing a large business. ”

“ Should the price of one article rise by attempted monopoly to a prohibitive basis, another product is called in to supply its place, which, by intrinsic merits, or by combination with others based on scientific authority, supplants the previous competitor. ”

“ When the reputation of a certain brand of goods of this nature becomes established, consumers make no further efforts to test its quality, and the retail price often becomes a customary price. If a manufacturer of such goods finds his trade injured by a rival, his most effective means of competition will often be, not a lowering of the price, but an increase of the outlay on advertising. ”

“ Market dominance-some power to control price and to exclude competition-is by no means the only test of whether the seller has the requisite economic power. Even absent a showing of market dominance, the crucial economic power may be inferred from the tying product's desirability to consumers or from uniqueness in its attributes. ”

“ In thus stating the problem it seems that the author must realize that he is dealing with a question of the distribution of wealth; that is, with the method of its apportionment among those who produce and handle farm products. But he considers marketing as entirely a part of production. In his review of the present system of marketing and in his analysis of its cost he dwells only upon activities which are mechanically necessary to put goods in the hands of the consumer. ”

“ It should be one of the first objects of all manufacturers to produce stuffs not only beautiful and quaint in design, but also adapted for every-day service, and decorous in humble and secluded life. And you must remember always that your business, as manufacturers, is to form the market, as much as to supply it. ”

“ In short, the open market is open to all; and every man has a right to sell there his labor, his skill, or his goods, of whatever sort he can produce, at such a price as he can obtain. The same is true of the buyer. I have a right to go into the open market and secure such goods as any one wishes to sell me at the lowest price for which he will part with them. ”

“ The price at which the manufacturer sells his goods is regulated on the one hand by the amount of competition with other manufacturers with which he has to contend, and on the other hand, by the larger or smaller supply of labor. ”

“ This brings me to consider what I apprehend to have been the most efficient of all the causes in the reduction of the prices of manufactured articles—and that is COMPETITION. By competition, the total amount of the supply is increased, and by increase of the supply, a competition in the sale ensues, and this enables the consumer to buy at lower rates. Of all human powers operating on the affairs of mankind, none is greater than that of competition. ”

“ If, on the contrary, the economies of making are transferred at once to the price and if it is well known that such is the policy of the manufacturer, the public will have confidence in him and will respond. ”

“ Like any other new industry, the selling should be developed slowly in order to minimize the possibility of loss and to assure stable business. One should study the situation carefully both from the manufacturing and marketing standpoints. ”

“ This extension of quick communication over the whole globe has been attended with the further advantages of making commercial products accessible to the largest possible circle of consumers, of making capital, which flows where it can be applied with the most profit, easily available at such spots, and in the acquisition of a number of storage points whence goods can be dispatched with but little delay to the places where there is a demand for them. ”

“ But what business ever started with the manufacturer and ended with the consumer? Where does the money to make the wheels go round come from? From the consumer, of course. And success in manufacture is based solely upon an ability to serve that consumer to his liking. He may be served by quality or he may be served by price. He is best served by the highest quality at the lowest price, and any man who can give to the consumer the highest quality at the lowest price is bound to be a leader in business, whatever the kind of an article he makes. ”

“ The ninety-five, made up of those who do not know and admit it and the fifteen who do not know but do not admit it, constitute the real market for any product. The five who want something special may or may not be able to pay the price for special work. If they have the price, they can get the work, but they constitute a special and limited market. Of the ninety-five perhaps ten or fifteen will pay a price for quality. Of those remaining, a number will buy solely on price and without regard to quality. Their numbers are thinning with each day. Buyers are learning how to buy. ”

“ This is the constant multiplication of intervening agents—middle-men, factors, brokers, speculators, contractors, and distributors of every sort—between the producer and the consumer, or between the primary owner and the ultimate owner of almost everything which is the subject of ownership and trade. Those two, who are the actual persons brought chiefly into relationship by the thing in question, are put quite out of sight of one another in most of the transactions of modern industry and commerce ”

“ The business of mercantile knowledge and enterprise is to discover and apply these conditions; so that, if a trader were to buy hides in Smithfield and carry them to Buenos Ayres, he would reverse these conditions,—he would buy in the dearest market and sell in the cheapest. ”

“ If this custom were universal, and strictly adhered to, competition indeed would still operate, but the consumer would not derive any benefit from it, at least as to price; the way in which it would diminish the advantages of those engaged in the retail trade, would be by a greater subdivision of the business. ”

“ Figure 102 shows how many different concerns stand between the manufacturer and those who buy his goods; the manufacturer turns his product over to the commission man who unloads it on the jobber or wholesaler, who sends drummers on the road, who make the retailer buy it, who hands it out over the counter to his customers, who are merely acquaintances of his.
All of the middlemen make big profits while the manufacturer and the retailer have to be satisfied [175] with a very small margin and the consumer knows that he is paying several prices too many for the article he buys. ”

“ This helps us to see perfectly what a market is. Defined in the terms of persons, a market is two men, each glad to get the product of the other, and to render in return his own product; defined in the terms of things, a market for products is products in market.
Now, what can limit the universal market for material products? Clearly, it can only be limited either in the element of Desires or in the element of Return-Services. But the desires of all men, even of one man, which the efforts of other men may satisfy, have never yet come to a stand-still. ”

“ You would have secured a much better bargain, no doubt, had there been twenty dealers in the room competing with each other, and a still better bargain had their number been fifty, or a hundred, or two hundred, because that would mean competition, and the more competition there is, in close contact and governed by rigid business rules, the more certain the approach to a perfect price. Everywhere in the world fairs and other gatherings of merchants are held at periodic intervals because people demand them in their effort to secure proper prices by competitive bidding and offering. ”

“ Watson’s Jeffersonian Magazine
All selling finally resolves itself into buying—buying the services of good men, buying business-bringing booklets and form letters, good advertising copy and advertising mediums—buying orders at a profitable figure.
An advertising medium is a known quantity. Why buy advertising space as you must choose a salesman, why trust to intuition or snap judgment, when you can work with figures? ”

“ The mainspring that impels all buyers and sellers to quicken their movements and to improve their methods and thus and otherwise to cheapen their costs of production, is the natural press of competition. ”