"So I was at Walmart yesterday in the medicine section. I saw this stomach medicine Zantac in two different packages. One had 8 pills and was about $3, one had 65 pills and was $17, so I thought "Hey someone at Walmart read your blog about marking up individual quantities of popular consumer items!" So for a blog post perhaps you could share other insights such as these and different strategies you have seen that work well in the real world economy that could relate back to the WoW economy."
Thanks,
Deip of Korgat
Deip, wow is a totally free market, devoid of government influence. Because of this, you will see some pretty wacky price gouging and fierce undercutting wars that you won't see in the real world economy, especially the US economy. Plus, there's no one around to stop monopolies!
There's something else missing from the wow economy, and that's quality. Often, people will buy something because of the brand name or the supposed quality of the item, and that's something you just don't have in wow.
The stock market closely resembles the wow auction house but it's still an auction house with it's own limitations. Your example is an excellent one in terms of relating wow to the real world. Ok, my turn:
At the end of a season (let's say Christmas), all the santa cookie jars go from 120% price down to 30% price in order to empty store shelves for room for normal inventory after the season. A savvy entrepreneur can buy out all those santa cookie jars and then resell them next Christmas for 80% when everyone else is charging 120%.
If you listened to the podcast then you know about the cyclical nature of wow; although this example is seasonal and the typical WoW one is weekly.
2 comments: on "Lesson from Walmart"
Hagu said... August 3, 2009 at 2:55 PM
The real life situation isn't quite fair; there are packaging costs. I believe the packaging for a can of Pringles costs more than the potato ships. So the manufacturer (and WalMart for that matter) would make less money selling two three-packs at $3 than a $6 six-pack.
Whereas the person who lists 20 infinite dust makes the same whether they list 1x20 or 20x1.
Natrually, this doesn't negate the useful idea to look at the crystalized and eternal markets together.
[nb]Caffeine said... August 3, 2009 at 3:08 PM
The difference in the ID case is that the lowest price for x1 ID can be different than the lowest cost for x20. I often list x1 at higher than the x20, because these show up first in the "lowest price" sorting. Similar trick to the selling fires in x1 crystals at 2x the price.
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