Bulk purchasing

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Bulk purchasing or mass buying is the purchase of much larger quantities than the usual, for a unit price that is lower than the usual.

Contents

Wholesaling is selling goods in large quantities at a low unit price to retail merchants. The wholesaler will accept a slightly lower sales price for each unit, if the retailer will agree to purchase a much greater quantity of units, so the wholesaler can maximize profit. A wholesaler usually represents a factory where goods are produced. The factory owners can use economy of scale to increase profit as the quantity sold increases. [1]

Retailing is buying goods in a wholesale market to sell them in small quantities at higher prices to consumers. Part of this profit is justified by logistics, the useful distribution function of the retailer, who delivers the goods to consumers and divides those large quantities of goods into many smaller units suitable for many transactions with many small parties of consumers. Retailers can also benefit from economy of scale to increase profit, just like a wholesaler does. [2]

Bulk purchasing is when a consumer captures part of the benefits of economy of scale by doing with the retailer what the retailer does with the wholesaler: paying a lower price per unit in exchange for purchasing much larger quantities. This allows the consumer to satisfy more of his or her demands at a lower total cost by acquiring more use value per dollar spent. [1]

Research has shown that simply displaying the per-unit price for an item sold in bulk would increase the adoption of bulk buying among lower-income families. This population cohort stands to reduce their supermarket expenditures by 5 percent if bulk purchasing is adopted at similar levels as higher-income cohorts. [3]

Consumer demand for savings by bulk purchase has led to the success of big-box stores. Although effected by marginal cost, the total cost does not increase.

Bulk purchasing also enables greater resilience, such that bulk buyers are able to build stockpiles of necessities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, bulk purchasing also contributed to better health outcomes by decreasing the overall number of trips to the grocery store, thus lessening opportunities for exposure to SARS-CoV-2. Since lower-income individuals were less likely to participate in bulk buying, this likely contributed to socioeconomic-related health inequalities during the pandemic. [3]

The bulk buying of perishables must be carefully planned and celebrated since per-unit savings can be erased if consumers purchase an excessive amount of a particular product and it spoils before it can be consumed or otherwise used. [4]

Music industry

In the music industry, bulk purchasing is one of illegal practices to manipulate charts, beside payola and streaming fraud. In South Korea, it's called "sajaegi" (사재기). [5]

In Korea, sajaegi generally refers to the illegal bulk-buying of any item — for example, a firm in South Korea recently sajaegi-ed over four million face-masks due to fears over the coronavirus outbreak.

But in music, sajaegi has a more specific meaning — unethically and/or illegally boosting a chart ranking. For example, entertainment agencies bulk-buying their own CDs; or, probably more likely in the digital era, using bots or computer farms to repeatedly stream songs and hike up chart numbers. Sajaegi scandals are testing the Korean music industry, questioning the credibility of online charts, entertainment agencies and even some fan engagement.

In the music industry, Sajaegi specifically refers to artists or their agencies engaging in manipulative bulk buying, rather than bulk purchasing schemes orchestrated by fans. Nonetheless, some bulk purchasing initiatives led by artists' fans were also accused of unethical mass buying. One controversial case is Dynamite by BTS. The band's fans (called "ARMY") created large fundraisers (or donations) totaling roughly $40,000, according to Paper. Paper also stated that Blackpink's fans, BLINK, raised funds upwards of $10,000 to buy Blackpink's first album, The Album. Other artists cited by Paper for such activities included Stray Kids, Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, Justin Bieber, and Miley Cyrus. [6]

Chart manipulation has been a controversial topic in South Korea. South Korea's Ministry of Culture banned midnight releases altogether, in order to avoid chart manipulation.

Additionally, to stop fan-orchestrated chart manipulation, Billboard has introduced new rules, mainly targeting the Billboard Hot 100. Only 1 digital sale will be counted per customer per week for songs and albums after the rule change. Bulk purchases of 2 or more will not be counted. [7]

See also

Related Research Articles

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A monopoly is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service. A monopoly is characterized by a lack of economic competition to produce a particular thing, a lack of viable substitute goods, and the possibility of a high monopoly price well above the seller's marginal cost that leads to a high monopoly profit. The verb monopolise or monopolize refers to the process by which a company gains the ability to raise prices or exclude competitors. In economics, a monopoly is a single seller. In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices, which is associated with unfair price raises. Although monopolies may be big businesses, size is not a characteristic of a monopoly. A small business may still have the power to raise prices in a small industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Supply and demand</span> Economic model of price determination in a market

In microeconomics, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a market. It postulates that, holding all else equal, the unit price for a particular good or other traded item in a perfectly competitive market, will vary until it settles at the market-clearing price, where the quantity demanded equals the quantity supplied such that an economic equilibrium is achieved for price and quantity transacted. The concept of supply and demand forms the theoretical basis of modern economics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deadweight loss</span> Measure of lost economic efficiency

In economics, deadweight loss is the loss of societal economic welfare due to production/consumption of a good at a quantity where marginal benefit does not equal marginal cost – in other words, there are either goods being produced despite the cost of doing so being larger than the benefit, or additional goods are not being produced despite the fact that the benefits of their production would be larger than the costs. The deadweight loss is the net benefit that is missed out on. While losses to one entity often lead to gains for another, deadweight loss represents the loss that is not regained by anyone else. This loss is therefore attributed to both producers and consumers.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wholesaling</span> Sale of goods or merchandise to retailers rather than end consumers

Wholesaling or distributing is the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers; to industrial, commercial, institutional or other professional business users; or to other wholesalers and related subordinated services. In general, it is the sale of goods in bulk to anyone, either a person or an organization, other than the end consumer of that merchandise. Wholesaling is buying goods in bulk quantity, usually directly from the manufacturer or source, at a discounted rate. The retailer then sells the goods to the end consumer at a higher price making a profit.

Price discrimination is a microeconomic pricing strategy where identical or largely similar goods or services are sold at different prices by the same provider to different buyers based on which market segment they are perceived to be part of. Price discrimination is distinguished from product differentiation by the difference in production cost for the differently priced products involved in the latter strategy. Price discrimination essentially relies on the variation in customers' willingness to pay and in the elasticity of their demand. For price discrimination to succeed, a seller must have market power, such as a dominant market share, product uniqueness, sole pricing power, etc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Retail</span> Sale of goods and services

Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is the sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and then sells in smaller quantities to consumers for a profit. Retailers are the final link in the supply chain from producers to consumers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Price</span> Amount of money given in order to purchase a thing or service

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In economics, tax incidence or tax burden is the effect of a particular tax on the distribution of economic welfare. Economists distinguish between the entities who ultimately bear the tax burden and those on whom the tax is initially imposed. The tax burden measures the true economic effect of the tax, measured by the difference between real incomes or utilities before and after imposing the tax, and taking into account how the tax causes prices to change. For example, if a 10% tax is imposed on sellers of butter, but the market price rises 8% as a result, most of the tax burden is on buyers, not sellers. The concept of tax incidence was initially brought to economists' attention by the French Physiocrats, in particular François Quesnay, who argued that the incidence of all taxation falls ultimately on landowners and is at the expense of land rent. Tax incidence is said to "fall" upon the group that ultimately bears the burden of, or ultimately suffers a loss from, the tax. The key concept of tax incidence is that the tax incidence or tax burden does not depend on where the revenue is collected, but on the price elasticity of demand and price elasticity of supply. As a general policy matter, the tax incidence should not violate the principles of a desirable tax system, especially fairness and transparency. The concept of tax incidence is used in political science and sociology to analyze the level of resources extracted from each income social stratum in order to describe how the tax burden is distributed among social classes. That allows one to derive some inferences about the progressive nature of the tax system, according to principles of vertical equity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pricing strategies</span> Approach to selling a product or service

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Demand</span> Concept in economics

In economics, demand is the quantity of a good that consumers are willing and able to purchase at various prices during a given time. In economics "demand" for a commodity is not the same thing as "desire" for it. It refers to both the desire to purchase and the ability to pay for a commodity.

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Collective buying power is the ability of a group of consumers or businesses to leverage the group size in exchange for discounts.

In business and marketing, “trade” refers to the relationship between manufacturers and retailers. Trade Promotion refers to marketing activities that are executed in retail between these two partners. Trade Promotion is a marketing technique aimed at increasing demand for products in retail stores based on special pricing, display fixtures, demonstrations, value-added bonuses, no-obligation gifts, and more.

Wholesale fashion distribution refers to the global market of bulk clothing sales, in which producers, wholesalers and sellers are involved in a commercial, business-to-business process.

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References

  1. 1 2 Mitchell, C. (17 January 2023). "What Is Bulk Purchasing?". SmartCapitalMind. Archived from the original on 19 February 2023. Retrieved 19 February 2023.
  2. Amadeo, Kimberly (18 January 2023). "The Retail Industry and Its Impact on the Economy". The Balance. Archived from the original on 19 February 2023. Retrieved 19 February 2023.
  3. 1 2 Doris, Áine (7 May 2020). "Why Low-Income Families Miss Out on Bulk Buying". Chicago Booth Review. Archived from the original on 29 November 2021. Retrieved 19 February 2023.
  4. Backman, Maurie (17 February 2023). "How to Save Money as Grocery Prices Soar Without Skipping Meals". Nasdaq. The Motley Fool. Archived from the original on 19 February 2023. Retrieved 19 February 2023.
  5. Kang, Haeryun (21 February 2020). "Inside Sajaegi, K-Pop's Open Secret". NPR.
  6. "How Much Does It Cost to Go Number One?". 29 September 2020.
  7. Manongdo, Jennifer (13 January 2022). "Billboard Introduces New Rules For Its Charts; BTS ARMY Reacts". International Business Times. Archived from the original on 13 January 2022. Retrieved 19 February 2023.