CHAPTER II
CHOOSING PRICE LEVELS TO INCREASE SALES
The price levels that serve customers best. Simplification and stand-
ardization of retail prices. How customers set our prices. The three
full lines and full-line prices. Standardized prices give the store Wool-
worth’s buying advantages, increased because at higher price levels.
The Model Stock Plan helps the buyer get far better values where mass
demand centers. . No in-between prices. Standardized prices help in
group buying. Better assortments, better values, greater sales. A
complete stock not necessarily large. Theoretically complete or com-
mercially complete? Losing customers by short stocks. Fewer prices,
easier selling. Why not four full lines? How different stores’ trade
overlaps. Records and experience in setting prices. Common sense in
prices. How often shall full-line prices change? Consistency in
price appeal. The Model Stock Plan for the store as a whole. Price,
quality, and style.
WE are now ready to see specifically how to set our selling
prices at the levels that serve the customers best and that
will, therefore, result in the greatest total profits to us. We
must start our whole examination of Model Stock Plan
merchandising from this point, for the right price levels are
basic in building goodwill of the kind that brings customers
past other stores to trade with us.
Buying bulks around certain prices. This is the fact that
makes possible the Model Stock Plan. No store has as yet
discovered how it can keep complete stocks covering the
whole price range from the very lowest to the very highest
and, at the same time, turn such great stocks often enough
to earn an adequate total profit. This is generally recog-
nized. Each store has its price individuality. The public
knows it as “exclusive” or “popular priced” or whatever
1 Perhaps a half dozen of the largest department stores in the United States
have succeeded in catering to practically all economic levels of thebuying
public. These are not exceptions to our principle but illustrations of its
inclusiveness. Actually, such a store must be regarded as an aggregation of
single stores, not as itself a single store. Considered in this light, the apparent
exception to the rule is seen to conform.
