CHOOSING PRICE LEVELS TO INCREASE SALES 35 
every department; it helps the management and the buyers 
to keep the same classes of goods in all lines. 
The Model Stock Plan for a given department or a division 
of a department is not a whole in itself. It is a part— at 
times a very small part—of a large and significant whole. 
If the Model Stock Plan means anything at all it means a 
common-sense correlation of the department policies of the 
store as a whole. 
It also has the merit of consolidating the merchandising 
power of the store, so that our buyers present a single front 
to our resources. One part does not fight other parts. That 
helps us in the market. It becomes known that our plan is 
effective. Our buyers’ opportunities of getting right prices 
and good values, therefore, are much better. 
On the side of selling, we must keep in mind that most 
goods are sold at retail not by specific pieces of advertising 
but by the tendency of the public to come to our store when 
they want our class of goods. We must ask ourselves 
frequently: What makes customers pass other stores to come 
here? And we must ask ourselves: Why do they pass our store 
to go elsewhere? The answer is that customers go where they 
find a consistently attractive stock at consistently lower 
average prices than other stores get for merchandise of the 
same quality and of equal style appeal. Price is recognized 
as the deciding factor most frequently; style and good taste 
are almost equally important. A customer will not keep 
coming to a store where she recognizes that she pays more 
or where she gets merchandise of poor style or questionable 
taste. 
As I have frequently defined it, the Model Stock Plan is 
basically only the standardization of prices which has as 
great possibilities of greater service to the public as it has of 
greater total profits to the owner.