Do retailers ever stock goods just to make other goods sell better?
"There's a concept in retail called a ""loss leader"", and essentially it means that a store will sell an item intentionally at a loss as a way of bringing in business in the hope that while consumers are in the store taking advantage of the discounted item, they'll make other purchases to make up for the loss and generate an overall profit. Many times it only makes sense to carry items that enhance the value of something else the store sells.  Stores pay big money to study consumer behaviors and preferences in order to understand what items are natural fits for each other and the best ways to market them.   A good example of what you're talking about is the fact that many grocery stores carry private label products that sell for higher margins, and they'll stock them alongside the name brands that cost much more.  As a consequence (and since consumers often don't see a qualitative difference between store brands and name brands much of the time to rationalize spending more), the store's own brands sell better. I hope this helps. Good luck!" They may stock items that frame the various price points. Of course they risk having the items go stale before they are sold. You also have situations where the store will advertise an item, but end up taking a loss on that sale because it will bring people in, and they will make other purchases. Determining what to stock, how to display it, and how to advertise it involves both math and psychology. "That happens all the time. The best situation for this to happen is when you have several products, each a bit better and a bit more expensive than the other, and you add a new product which is the cheapest. That gets people into the store to look at the cheapest product, and then you show the the next more expensive which is so much better for only a little more money, and the next more expensive which is again so much better... You might not sell any of the cheapest product but it helps you sell the others.  Also happens the other way round: You add a really expensive item, unaffordable for most customers, that is really, really nice. Then customers look at it and you show them that for half the price they can have something that is almost as nice. The expensive product increases the amount that customers think is ""the right price"" for that kind of product. A customer might think that $2,000 for a diamond ring is an awful lot of money, but if you show them another ring for $5,000 then suddenly the $2,000 doesn't look that expensive anymore. And if it is almost as nice as the $5,000 ring, you sell a lot of rings for $2,000 because you had the more expensive ring in the store." Use of this is demonstrated in this video: https://youtu.be/Ip5jG3djdyk Stocking products that you have no intention of selling can be used to make other products look more appealing by comparison. It's more psychological than anything but it isn't an uncommon practice.
The more the stock is worth, the more it needs to rise to make a profit. You can buy some stock from Google or amazon, but that's about all the stock you'd have... Start small with companies you know and trust that have an upward trend. Hardly anyone retail shops on eBay, this is visible just on the [Google trends compared to the two other competitors](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&amp;q=amazon,ebay,walmart) mentioned here.  Notice, compared to those two, eBay has basically no holiday season bump?  It's peak was in December 2007 and since then Amazon's been eating it's lunch and even Walmart gained a little ground.  As eBay transitioned from fleamarket to Chinese junk retailer, to compete with Amazon, one major thing it lost out on was reviews.  Every item from every merchant is it's own listing with no history (beyond merchant reputation).  Add onto that, the fact you're not dealing with a single entity (like Amazon) and it's a bust.  That's why, even if I'm not intending on buying it from Amazon, I browse it to see the reputation of the product.  Oftentimes, I buy a competitor's product from there.  Even Walmart has it.  Ebay has little to none of that - essentially buying blind.  Price-matching a tiny subset of product won't fix shit. "Yes, this is common and in some cases may be required.  They may use it for marketing at some level, but they also use it for risk management in deciding, for example, how much margin to offer and whether to approve access to ""riskier"" products like stock options." I'm not specifically referring to forced acceptance of returns. You can produce a product that's excellent with minimal quality issues, but it doesn't mean that Costco won't squeeze you out on other things. In the end it's a numbers game, and the vendor will always lose when the performance of their product begins to drop, regardless of quality issues. That's when the large retailers start squeezing you. "No. Some grocery stores may discount specific products based on inventory to drive sales using ""loss leaders"" where the product is intentionally priced as a loss for the business. While commodity futures may impact some prices, I'm not sure one can easily extract the changes solely due to futures shifts." No, but the damage to the quality/reputation of the brand can be very real. Amazon absolutely has an inventory problem where they  are turning a blind eye to counterfeit goods. This problem is exacerbated by their commingling of inventory, where they can get the same item from multiple suppliers - where some of the goods are genuine and some are counterfeits and they are mixed together. If the good being bought is listed on Amazon as genuine, but the consumer is shipped a low-quality fake, then it is reasonable for the customer to assume the quality of the good is low as they assume Amazon would not ship a counterfeit.  In Birkenstock's case, they are alleging that very thing happened. Amazon was allegedly selling counterfeits that they got from other sources than directly from Birkenstock [via the authorized seller option], and then were shipping those to customers - causing damage to the Birkenstock brand. Though, if that were true, I would expect Birkenstock to sue Amazon and not simply badmouth them. "Your statement - ""not practical"" -  presumes that the primary goal of having the store is to allow the store to thrive. But if you subscribe to the idea that stores and other companies are just organizations of people, that presumption is false  we humans form social structures that benefit people who live within the social structures - towns, cities, teams, companies, political parties.   the success of ""the store""  or the company or the team, or the ""city"", is not the primary goal. The success of the people ought to be the primary goal.   Example: hospitals weren't originally conceived to make money and grow. They were conceived to aid people who were sick. These days hospitals make a LOT OF MONEY , despite being classified as nonprofit institutions in the USA. As a result we have bad medical practice - over prescription of opioids, over use of surgeries, over-use of diagnostic tests, etc., - all of which benefits the hospital but not the patients.   It's not always a clear line - look at the real jobs vs environment issues in mining or fracking.   But the balance we have struck now, gives great profits to the companies (profits are at record highs) while income inequality is also at record highs. How is that sensible or sustainable. Or moral?   My key point here is that your statement that ""it's not practical for the store"" is misguided. The store's well being cannot be the primary goal of commerce. We need to place a higher priority on benefiting people. (Broadly framed - not just owners of the store)" While this may be true for certain stores, it isn't true across the board. An ex worked at a high-end clothing store and they did in fact pack up everything that didn't sell during that season and ship it to the outlets. This was also the case for many of the other high-end stores. I have heard through the grapevine that in your contract with Costco, the manufacturer has to GUARANTEE that all their products will sell. So everything on the shelves is literally sold already, even if nobody buys it. Allegedly it put many businesses out. How can you correlate a company stock's performance with overall market performance. No you can't. There is no simple magic formulae that will result in profits. There are quite a few statistical algorithms that specialists have built, that work most of the times. But they are incorrect most of the times as well. You have no clue what you are talking about!  It's all natural progress of Retail.   When Sears sent its first catalogs, it killed most rural stores.   When Mr. Goldman invented the shopping cart, and Supermarkets were possible, it killed most grocery stores.  When department stores started, they killed most specialty stores.  When Amazon started, and on-line shopping, it killed all book stores and many other stores.  When 3D printers get fast and more versatile, the made-to-order will kill Amazon.  Etc, etc, etc... "I agree, and would add that the Sears website is the worst ""major retailer"" I've shopped online.  They can't track stock based on what is sold.  Many of their products are sold by shady 3rd parties, and the search results are almost useless." retail has been in a slump for quite a few years now.  these companies are short on cash, cut costs, take on debt to pay manufacturers and fund operating costs, products do not sell, short on cash, cut costs, take on debt again etc  go through this cycle enough times everyone starts to look for exits - banks want to get paid on the loans and retailers want to lower the debt service.  this usually ends up at the door step of a PE shop  these retailers are usually over levered by the time PE ships are involved.  PE adds its own tranches of debt and off to the races the retailers go  many retailers are figuring out consumers just are not interested in buying from them, no cash, cut costs, cannot service debt, Ch 11, likely end up on the doorsteps of another PE shop I don't think retail cares so much about being taken for a few bps here and there, but more so about the insane volatility that is the new normal in markets. This vol., which in many cases can be tracked back to HFT, has had a negative feedback loop that resulted in lower volumes across the board.  I don't think retail cares about a few bps here and there, but if the entire system is based on trust in market efficiency, and computers make them less efficient by purposefully manipulating the system, retail might just not chose to play any more.  Think of it like baseball vs. football.  Football has salary caps, and, as such, all teams have a fair shot at winning every year, baseball doesn't, and a few teams with the biggest budgets consistently win year over year. Yeah, it's great if you're a Yankees, Red Sox, Giants or Phillies fan, but many other cities in the country don't care about baseball much anymore and favor football. Look at viewership stats by market over time. HFT is the same way, it's great if you have the money to compete in that system, but by destroying the integrity of the system itself, many participants just stop caring as much and go elsewhere... I don't think there's a conclusive answer to your question, but I have a real world example for you.   I was in a similar situation for almost 6 years (I was the friend, but also the one with the highest pay). I rented a house, my name on everything. I made a separate contract with both my friend and his GF and they both rented a room from me. I looked up the total m2 of the house and divided the rent by that number. Multiplied by room sizes I knew what everyone had to pay for their personal space, I simply divided the rest by 3 to find the remainder of everyone's rent.   I don't know the numbers anymore, but here's an example: house = 150 m2 room 1 = 10 m2 room 2 = 15 m2 room 3 = 25 m2 shared space = 100 m2 rent = 800,-   This gives 5.33 per m2 The shared space is worth 533.33 Divided by 3 is 177.77, So the total rent for each room is: room 1 = 10*5.33 + 177.77 ≈ 231 room 2 = 15*5.33 + 177.77 ≈ 258 room 3 = 25*5.33 + 177.77 ≈ 311   We divided the rest of the costs (gas, power, water, etc...) evenly. This was fair in our case, because the rent was directly tied to the size of the rooms. The only thing we had left to do was give the poorest person the smallest room.