If merchants only get a small amount from what they sell, then how do they make profit if one or more of their product isn’t sold ?

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Let’s take a phone merchand for example. Let’s say that he sells the phones for 500$, but his income from a phone is 50$ because they are sold 450$ from the factory. So, if just ONE phone isn’t sold, he’d lose 450$, and he’d need to sell 9 phones (450÷5) just to come back to the starting point.

This question also works for any kind of merchandizing, including food (which becomes unsellable after a few days unlike phones).

So how do they make profit of it ? I’m confused

This post is the same as a post I made 1 hour ago that corrects some words, sorry for my bad english.

In: Economics

25 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

In addition to the other great answers, many retailers sell accessories with a high profit margin alongside the “main” products. So a smart phone might have a low profit margin but phone cases and charging cables and headphone adapter cables and pop sockets can all have very high profit margins and a significant percentage of customers will buy several new accessories along with their new phone.

At grocery stores, the items in the checkout line like candy and gum and magazines have a higher profit margin and longer shelf life than the actual groceries. And enough customers buy some of those items along with their groceries that it boosts the overall profit of the store.

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