:''For people whose family name is
Price see
Price (disambiguation).''
In
economics and
business, the
price is the assigned numerical monetary
value of a
good,
service or
asset. The concept of price is central to
microeconomics where it is one of the most important variables in
resource allocation theory (also called price theory). Price is also central to
marketing where it is one of the four variables in the
marketing mix that business people use to develop a
marketing plan.
Historically,
price value has superseded the
barter value of pre-monetary systems, in which bartering was used to determine a value of a good or service. Economists, strictly speaking, view price as an exchange ratio between goods. Thus it exists also in a barter system. From this point of view, price is akin to
opportunity cost, that is, what must be given up in exchange for the good or service that is being
purchased.
The price of an item is also called the
price point, especially where it refers to
stores that set a limited number of price points. For example,
Dollar General is a
general store or "
five and dime" store that sets price points only at even amounts, such as exactly one, two, three, five, or ten
dollars (among others). Other stores (such as
dollar stores,
pound stores,
euro stores, 100-
yen stores, and so forth) only have a single price point (1$, 1£, 1€, 100¥), though in some cases this may get more than one of some very small items.
See also
category:Pricing
Category:Marketing
de:Preis
es:Precio
eo:Prezo
fr:Prix
it:Prezzo
ja:価格
pl:Cena
sk:Cena (ekonómia)
zh:价格