Retail price

“ Fourthly, changes in a relatively small collection of prices, particularly if foodstuff prices bulk 111 largely in the collection, are apt to be more convulsive than general price movements. They are likely to vary more than general price movements from year to year, and, indeed, from season to season. This is so, although it is true that retail prices tend to be far more stable than wholesale prices. ”

“ Selection of the Index Number. A weighted arithmetical index number for wholesale prices of commodities should be used. Wholesale prices are more prompt to indicate what change in the dollar's weight is needed than retail prices. The frequency of calculation should probably be about once every two months to afford full time for the lag between the previous adjustment and its effect.
4. Selection of the Par. This should be left to a judicial commission. Probably we should start off the system at a price level near that existing at the time. ”

“ Like the increase in the physical volume of business, the rise of prices spreads rapidly; for every advance of quotations puts pressure upon some one to recoup himself by making a compensatory advance in the prices of what he has to sell. The resulting changes in prices are far from even, not only as between different commodities, but also as between different parts of the system of prices. Retail prices lag behind wholesale, the prices of staple consumers' behind the prices of staple producers' goods, and the prices of finished products behind the prices of their raw materials. ”

“ It is true that retail prices usually lag behind wholesale prices; but part of the lagging is more apparent than real. Expert testimony of those who have collected such statistics shows that when, as at present, prices are rising rapidly, retailers obviate the necessity of confronting their customers with too frequent and rapid increases in prices by quoting the same prices and substituting inferior grades or, in some instances, smaller loaves or packages. ”

“ The wholesale jobbers of course advance the price, and in the retail stores they are higher yet; so that each tradesman through whose hands they pass has his trifle of profit in helping to shoe the feet of the doll-people. They retail from a dollar and a dollar and a quarter a dozen, to three dollars and seventy-five cents, according to the style. ”

“ It may sometimes happen that the fall in price never reaches the consumer, but stops short with the wholesale or retail trader, although this tendency is to some extent counteracted by the competition in retail trade. ”

“ Is it quite understood that there are two prices for these articles-a cash price, and a price in goods?-Yes; I think that is quite understood. Of course, if a woman comes in with a shawl for which she is willing to take 20s. in goods, she would be equally willing to take 16s. or 17s. in cash, because the difference between the 16s. or 17s. in cash and the 20s. in goods represents the retail draper's profit, which is supposed to run from 15 to 20 or 25 per cent. ”

“ All the large and successful retail stores in this country are on the one-price basis. The only further step required is to throw overboard the idea of pricing on what the traffic will bear and instead go to the common-sense basis of pricing on what it costs to manufacture and then reducing the cost of manufacture. If the design of the product has been sufficiently studied, then changes in it will come very slowly. But changes in manufacturing processes will come very rapidly and wholly naturally. ”

“ It was considered outrageous to sell a thing for more than the just price, no matter how anxious the purchaser might be to obtain it. Every manufacturer was required to keep a shop in which he offered at retail all that he made. ”

“ In four fifths of these great retail stores, the discovery that the purchaser is an American or an Englishman, and a stranger, is a signal for increasing the regular price of every article he desires to purchase ”

“ The Municipal Committe for Combating the High Cost of Living has opened ten storage houses and thirty-three retail stores, in which all articles are sold at cost price. This experiment has proved to be very successful as a means of combating inflation of prices. ”

“ Retail prices of exports and imports are obtained by adding 50% to the wholesale figures reported, on the assumption that wholesale prices are two-thirds of retail prices. The percentages in the final column are obtained by dividing the figures for foreign trade by the figures for domestic trade. The percentage would reach 100 when foreign trade becomes equal to domestic trade. ”

“ I asked. "Suppose he buys something for $1.00, and the regular price is $1.50. He cuts that 15 per cent.—he would be selling it at—at $1.27. He would make 27¢ profit!"
"Ye're wrong," replied Jock. "The cost o' the goods is no the bare invoice price, but the cost plus the cost o' selling. Noo, as ye ken, it will cost ye round aboot 30 per cent. on cost to sell your goods, so that those goods would cost $1.00 plus 30¢, the cost o' selling; and when he sells them for $1.27 he'll be losing 3¢ on every sale." ”

“ In short, the prompter the indications for needed adjustments, the prompter the adjustments, and the history of prices has repeatedly and clearly shown that wholesale prices respond the most promptly of all classes of commodity prices. They rise or fall before retail prices, just as retail prices do before wages, and wages before salaries. ”

“ Only articles which are standardized, and only those the use of which remains through many years, are available and important enough to include. These specifications exclude real estate, and to some extent wages, retail prices, and securities, thus leaving practically nothing but wholesale prices of commodities to be included in the list of goods, the prices of which are to be compounded into an index number. ”

“ Things have their wholesale and retail prices. True, these vary more or less, from accidental causes, such as the abundance or scarcity of the article, the state of the money market, or the season of the year. Buyers, by watching these accidental influences, may purchase more or less to their advantage. ”

“ I never saw a price-cutter yet who had a real, solid business. People are wise these days, you know. You offer anything at less than cost price and people flock to buy it; but it doesn't mean that they are necessarily going to buy other goods at the same time. ”

“ That is where your two and one-half per cent. has departed. I'll summarize those excess expenses:
[Pg 302] "Here's the poseetion," continued Jock. "The average mark-oop is thirty-three and one-third per cent. on stock, or twenty-five per cent. profit on sales price. Expenses were planned tae be twenty per cent. of sales, and, had that been so, ye would hae had five per cent. profit after all expenses had been paid, for yourself."
I began to listen attentively. Isn't it strange how one sits up and takes notice when one's own pocketbook is in discussion? ”

“ But not only has farm produce to be raised—it has also to be placed on the market. The term 'production' is sometimes so interpreted as to cover the production of any utility, and to embrace the effort of labour and expenditure of capital undertaken by retail distributors. But, in any event, it comprises the effort and expenditure needed to place commodities on wholesale markets. The expenses of production, then, in the case of farm produce, include its carriage to the market as well as the cultivation of the land from which it is raised. ”

“ Each "supply curve" or "demand curve" rests upon the unconscious assumption of a price level already existing. Although the curves relate to a commodity, they relate to it only as compared with money. A price is a ratio of exchange between the commodity and money. The money side of each exchange must never be forgotten nor the fact that money already stands in the mind of the purchaser for a general purchasing power. ”

“ The more of a particular commodity he has the lower his subjective valuation of a unit of that commodity; the more money he owns the lower his estimation of a dollar and the higher his subjective prices; and vice versa. Through a process of competition, selection, and adaptation, some of these subjective prices develop into market prices, that is, prices at which both buyer and seller benefit, and at which therefore an exchange takes place. To paraphrase an old adage, the proof of the market price is in the exchange. ”

“ This is what confines the fluctuation of prices within limits which are compatible with the reasonable profits of both buyers and sellers; for, as has been said, in treating of trade, we must constantly suppose the whole operation of buying and selling to be performed by merchants; the buyer cannot be supposed to give so high a price as that which he expects to receive, when he distributes to the consumers, nor can the seller be supposed to accept of a lower than that which he paid to the manufacturer. ”

“ Each time a pile has risen, the average level of all has fallen.
VIII.75 The proposition that a general increase in demand, resulting in an increase in trade, tends to decrease and and not to increase the general level of prices, may be regarded as a sort of pons asinorum to test one's knowledge of the fundamental distinction between those influences affecting the general price level and those affecting the rise and fall of a particular price with respect to that level. ”

“ Besides, one could not always depend on goods being supplied a second time at the same price. If, for example, the merchants supply a sample of doorknobs, and quote a price, and an additional order is given for ten or fifty gross, they will in all probability increase the price ten per cent. ”

“ In considering the influence affecting individual prices we say that an increase in supply lowers prices, but an increase in demand raises them. But in considering the influences affecting price levels we enter upon an entirely different set of concepts, and must not confuse the proposition that an increase in the trade (the Q's) tends to lower the price level, with the proposition that an increase in supply tends to lower an individual price. Trade (the Q's) is not supply—in fact is no more to be associated with supply than with demand. ”

“ In the case of all commodities which cannot be bought or sold at a common market place (or exchange) , price fluctuations are usually wide and frequent, because no large group ever has common knowledge of supply, demand and other factors that govern prices—purchases and sales are made direct between individuals, and knowledge of the amount asked or paid is restricted to a limited few. ”

“ The sale price of commodities at a given time is not always determined on the basis of the original cost of the commodity plus the costs of maintaining a store for its sale. Competition sometimes enters in to drive the price down below this amount. While every merchant expects in the long run to receive from the sale of his merchandise not only what he himself has paid for it but also the cost of conducting his store and a fair margin of profit, for a given period and for a given item of merchandise he may not be so fortunate. ”

“ The buyers must be supposed as studious to buy cheap, as the sellers to sell dear. The values and prices, therefore, to which our conclusions apply, are mercantile values and prices; such prices as are quoted in price-currents; prices in the wholesale markets, in which buying as well as selling is a matter of business; in which the buyers take pains to know, and generally do know, the lowest price at which an article of a given quality can be obtained; and in which, therefore, the axiom is true, that there cannot be for the same article, of the same quality, two prices in the same market. ”

“ The reasons for dispersion are principally three: (1) Many prices are restrained by previous contract, by legal prohibition, or by force of custom. (2) Some prices are intimately related to the money metal. (3) Each individual price is subject to special variation under the influence of its particular supply and demand. There exists, however, a compensation in price movements in the sense that the failure of one set of prices to respond to any influence on the price level will necessitate a correspondingly greater change in other prices. ”

“ They do so in terms of Price when measured by Money; they do so in the essentials of Value when measured by comparisons of commodities. As a rule, however, Money-prices are fair guides to Commodity values. Commodity values rise and fall according to cost of production, inclusive of delivery; and in so far as Money is stable, the rise and fall in prices is evidence of variations in production cost.
The relative rise and fall in Value, be it measured by prices in Money or otherwise, is so common a phenomenon of Trade that critics might be pardoned for denying a Value level. ”

“ When a single small country is under consideration, it is therefore preferable to say that the quantity of money in that country is determined by the universal price level, rather than to say that its level of prices is determined by the quantity of money within its borders. ”

“ If, speaking broadly, and embracing somewhat longer periods, all descriptions of commodities sell at their respective values, it is nonsense to suppose that profit, not in individual cases, but the constant and usual profits of different trades, spring from the prices of commodities, or selling them at a price over and above their value. ”

“ The prices thus fixed are usually followed when the transaction occurs outside, and the 'market price' means really the 'exchange price.' That an enormous amount of the business of the country which is engaged in the distribution of the commodities grown or produced therein is transacted and takes place through the medium of boards of trade or exchanges cannot be doubted. ”