by Dax23333 » Sat Dec 30, 2017 12:06 pm
Interesting point about over inflation of stock Elias, I think you just hit the nail on the head.
There is so much stuff in the market, and low demand, that if the seller is paying attention the chest will always be in stock. At this point a higher priced chest will not receive sales as cheaper goods are available, and logically the customer wants the lower price. Sales of the more expensive chest can now be had in a couple of ways. First, buy up cheaper stock and resell. There seems to be a taboo against this. The second way is to post a lower price so customers go to your chest instead.
So overinflasion of stock would cause this... Too many sellers fighting over very few customers.
As for sneakys first statement, about how with undercutting there will be one dominant seller at the end. Let me explain as the point seems to have been missed. There is no might about it, it is the logical outcome.
So we start out with lots of sellers with high prices such that all of them are making a killing from sales. Somebody comes along with a lower price, and as the customers are not stupid and the market is small enough to look around, they buy from the Lower price and the higher price loses sales.
Unhappy with lost sales someone lowers thier price to complete and actually sell something. Another player might decide to leave at this point, unsatisfied with the profit made.
As long as people don't go and resell cheaper stock then this will loop around for a while, as we have seen on lvs already with the more popular items to sell. More and more people drop out because it isn't worth thier time, leaving very few players selling things at very low prices making it unprofitable for somebody coming in. These few players left could be considered dominant at this point.
If you require further evidence that this will happen look at real life business, in particular the dominance of supermarkets and large online retailers. The free market goes that way, favoring the large enterprise over the small.
Of course we have the added issue of all the items being the same. If you were to buy cheese you could get cheap but not that nice cheese from a supermarket, or get really nice cheese from a small cheese shop. Both have their advantages, but our market both shops sell items that are exactly the same, so the customer only shoots themselves in the foot by buying from the smaller and more expensive shop.
And with demand so low even buying people out to resel won't work that well as restocking is so quick and it is slow to sell things.