The best-selling full line is at the intermediate price at which
all of our customers buy at one time or another, at which
most of our customers buy all of the time, and at which we,
consequently, sell the most goods.
The average producer makes no particular effort to avoid
an indefinite number of variations in price. He usually
makes up his mind what material, style, and kind of goods
he wants to manufacture. Then he finds out what the
article so made costs him and fixes his profit on top of that.
This is exactly the opposite of Ford’s policy which, by his
own statement, is: “I first reduce the price to a point where
I believe more sales will result. Then we go ahead and try
to make the price. I do not bother about costs. The new
price forces the costs down . .. No one knows what a
cost ought to be . .. I can make more discoveries con-
cerning manufacturing and selling under this forced method
than by any method of leisurely investigation.”
Of course, customers do not fall into three clearly delineated
classes by incomes and purchasing powers. If we list them
in order by actual incomes, we shall find the differences so
slight that the intervals are hardly perceptible all the way
from bottom to top of the purchasing power of the masses
of our customers. Experience has shown, however, that at
any one time there are certain prices which the public regards
as the season’s prices.
If, for our class of trade, the three prices of popular demand
in dresses, that is, the three full-line prices—the prices at
which the public demands that the retailer supply the
best he can for the money—are $15, $25, and $35, then
customers will come in expecting to find dresses at those
prices. The advantages of the Model Stock Plan are such
‘hat the customer on examination will usually find at $15—
the cheapest full line—almost all the desirable dresses that
competitors who do not use the Model Stock Plan offer at
prices up to our best-selling full-line price. Therefore, if by
any chance she is still not satisfied with our $15 dresses, she
will generally go to the next higher full-line price, provided
our full-line prices are right. The customer, for example,
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