nS 
THE MODEL STOCK PLAN 
largest number of people buy. Setting these full-line prices 
accurately is vital to the success of the plan. 
We can check each of our full-line prices against carefully 
selected stores. I have three actual stores in mind, which I 
shall designate with numbers: x is an exclusive store, 2 is 
a popular store, and 3 is a low-price store. 
These distinctions are not absolute. Rather, they are 
characteristic. Naturally, the business of store 3 does not 
begin with low-priced merchandise precisely where 2 stops; 
nor does 1 begin with high-priced merchandise where 2 
stops in that direction. The business of all three overlaps 
to an extent. Thus, store 1 may carry a given line of goods 
as its cheapest full line, while store 3 may carry the same 
goods as its highest-priced full line; and these goods may be 
the best-selling full line of store 2. This fact indicates the 
value of correcting our full-line prices, as shown by our 
sales records, against what we can learn about the goods that 
are actually selling in quantities in other stores. 
The tendency, on an unscientific basis, is almost always to 
fix the higher prices speculatively with the idea that the 
mass of retail customers, being attracted by the article, will 
pay the price at -which it is marked. And so the mass 
of customers will pay it, sometimes. But they will not 
pay it and cannot pay it, as a rule; that is, the article can- 
not be steadily sold in great quantities at this erratic price 
set to get as much profit as possible. So the total sales are 
lessened, and the percentage of overhead or indirect expense 
is consequently increased. Thus the traditional method of 
fixing price levels tends to increase the store’s cost of doing 
business. 
But, as soon as the three prices which the average income 
of our customers will allow them to pay is factually fixed, 
the buyer for this market at these prices will center his 
a 
1 Many a merchant who handles the “better trade” would be surprised 
to find how many articles his customers, prosperous as they are, buy in 
five- and ten-cent chain stores, dollar chain stores, and the like. This fact, 
which is not yet widely recognized, makes it probable that more and more, 
even of the higher-price stores, will establish basement stores.