CHOOSING PRICE LEVELS TO INCREASE SALES 19 
who is on the border line between being “average” and 
“higher income’ will, when buying a dress for regular wear, 
decide between the $25 and $35 dresses according to her 
willingness to spend and her preference as to whether she 
would rather have a number of $25 dresses a year or not quite 
so many dresses of better quality. 
It might seem that this loses us dollar volume by making 
only a $25 sale to a customer who comes in for a $25 dress 
but who otherwise might be induced to pay $27.50 or $30; 
we know she is not likely to pay $35, which is $10 more. 
The answer is, of course, that if we can regularly give her 
at $25 dresses for which she would elsewhere be charged 
$27.50 or $30.00 or even $35.00 we shall make her into a 
steady customer who will do in our store as much of her 
buying as she can. By the consequent additional volume 
we get from her, and from the other customers drawn by the 
increasing goodwill and reputation of the store, we materially 
increase our total sales and our total profits. 
Perhaps we are wondering whether we shall actually be 
able to give her at $25 articles of so much more than ordinary 
value. Any doubt will be removed as soon as we realize 
that when once these three full-line prices have been fixed, 
the buyer buying for any one of these prices goes at his 
problem exactly as Woolworth’s buyer does for his five- 
and ten-cent goods with such remarkable success. 
The Woolworth buyer flatly refuses to buy anything at a 
price that would necessitate selling it to the customer at 
12 or 25 cents. But he does not dismiss desirable goods 
from consideration just because of the 1 or 2 cents—or 
even, perhaps, 25 cents—excess above his established selling 
price. Instead, he tries his utmost, on any item he wants, 
to work out with the manufacturer a way by which the pro- 
ducer can profitably sell him the article in quantity at a 
figure that will permit Woolworth’s to retail it at 10 cents. 
Woolworth’s obtains far greater values than anyone 
believed possible before their stores actually accomplished 
it and built up tremendous sales volume in consequence. 
We must alwayskeep in mind that Woolworth’s achievements