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| food service supplies - manufacturing industries such as steel and automobiles have been weakened because of foreign competition, marketing departments have become increasingly responsible for generating profitable sal_es volume. Thus, their stature in top-level business decision-making has been enhanced. This trend gives every indication of continuing in the foreseeable future. As competition continues to increase and businesses become even more diversified, the marketing profession is likely to provide more personnel in the ranks of top manag_ement. The U. S. economy, with its system of private ownership, has an extensive set of markets for final products and for the factors of production. The economy has been particularly successful in providing material goods and services to most of its citizens. That is even more striking when results in the U. S. economy are compared with those of other nations and economic systems. Nevertheless, most U. S. consumers say they would like to be able to buy and use more goods and services than they have today. And some U. S. citizens are calling for significant changes in how the economic system works, or at least in how the purchasing power and the goods and services in the system are divided up among | different individuals and families. Buyers hope to buy at low prices and will purchase more units of a product at lower prices than they do at higher prices. Sellers are just the opposite. They hope to sell at high prices, and typically they will be willing to produce and sell more units of a product at higher prices than at lower prices. The price for a product is determined in the market if prices are allowed to rise and fall, and are not legally required to be above some minimum price floor or below some maximum price ceiling. When a product, for example, a personal computer, reaches the market, consumers learn what producers want to charge for it and producers learn what consumers are willing to pay. The interaction of producers and consumers quickly establishes what the market price for the computer will actually be. Some people who were considering buying a computer decide that the price is higher than they are willing to pay. And some producers may determine that consumers are not willing to pay a price high enough for them profitably to produce and sell this computer. But all of the buyers who are willing and able to pay the market price get the computer, and all of the sellers willing and able to produce it for this price find buyers. |
