This document discusses the concept of profit maximization for businesses. It provides three key points:
1. There are three approaches for businesses to increase profit: increasing total revenue with constant total costs, decreasing total costs with constant total revenue, or increasing total revenue while decreasing total costs.
2. Simply increasing sales or decreasing costs does not necessarily lead to higher profits if costs increase faster than revenue or revenue decreases with lower costs.
3. The optimum combination that maximizes profit is the level of production where the difference between total revenue and total costs is greatest. This may not be achieved by just applying a fixed markup rate and requires analyzing different production levels.
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Managerial Economics: The Goal of Maximum Profit
This document discusses the concept of profit maximization for businesses. It provides three key points:
1. There are three approaches for businesses to increase profit: increasing total revenue with constant total costs, decreasing total costs with constant total revenue, or increasing total revenue while decreasing total costs.
2. Simply increasing sales or decreasing costs does not necessarily lead to higher profits if costs increase faster than revenue or revenue decreases with lower costs.
3. The optimum combination that maximizes profit is the level of production where the difference between total revenue and total costs is greatest. This may not be achieved by just applying a fixed markup rate and requires analyzing different production levels.
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MANAGERIAL
ECONOMICS CHAPTER 3.1 THE GOAL OF MAXIMUM PROFIT THE GOAL OF MAXIMUM PROFIT
Profitability is the only means to attain
financial viability. In the absence of profit, any firm will hardly be able to fulfill its responsibilities to different stakeholders. Hence, profit is not considered a corporate objective in itself, but a requirement for the attainment of objectives. PROFIT The difference between total revenue from the sales of goods and services and the total costs incurred in producing and selling these goods and services.
Profit = Total Revenue – Total Cost
or Pr = TR - TC PROFIT MAXIMIZATION
Given the formula, there are three possible
approaches/ways of increasing profit:
1. With TC constant, increase TR
2. With TR constant, decrease TC
3. Increase TR and decrease TC
APPROACH 1: WITH TC CONSTANT, INCREASE TR When a businessman tries to increase total revenue by promoting sales, total costs can hardly be expected to remain constant.
Sales may have risen precisely because more
inputs (and therefore higher costs) went into the production and marketing of more goods that were sold. APPROACH 2: WITH TR CONSTANT, DECREASE TC When a businessman reduces his costs (which be accompanied by less inputs), total revenue may not remain constant.
It could very well decrease also because of
reduced selling effort and/ or decreased production. It is therefore, not clear whether profit will rise if total costs are decreased. APPROACH 3: INCREASE TR AND DECREASE TC This approach seems to be the best of both worlds. In fact, it is the simplistic advice of a number of management consultants. “Increase revenue and decrease costs!” Let us, therefore, see how economic analysis opens new horizons in profit planning to the firm manager. THE OPTIMUM COMBINATION How do firms usually attains a preferred level of profit? One very common practice is to determine the price of a commodity based on the firm’s average cost plus a fixed mark-up; that is,
Price per unit = Average Cost + Mark-up
THE OPTIMUM COMBINATION Since average cost is defined as the cost incurred in producing a single unit, then pricing a commodity at any level above average cost yields profit. In the last formula, profit per unit is the difference between price and average cost that is,
Profit (or Mark-Up) = Price per unit - Average Cost
Total profit, in turn, equals profit per unit times
total quantity sold. OPTIMIZATION The firm’s cost accountant tells the manager how much each unit costs and the manager simply applies the formula to determine price and subsequently total profit.
By applying economic analysis, firms can
attain still higher levels of profits even beyond the projected mark-up rate. The firm manager must have a clearer understanding of the concept of optimization. OPTIMIZATION The rationale behind optimization can be stated as follows:
As the revenue and cost increase
simultaneously, though at different rates, the combination that yields maximum profit (the optimum combination) is that which corresponds to the level of production at which the difference between revenue and cost is greatest. THE OPTIMUM COMBINATION
The illustration shows that profit does not
necessarily increase with greater revenue. If cost rises faster than revenue, profit declines. THE OPTIMUM COMBINATION Example A: Selling Costs Sales Profits A. (1st Stage) P 2,000 P 10,000 P 8,000 B. (2nd Stage) 4,000 15,000 11,000 C. (3rd Stage) 6,000 18,000 12,000 D. (4th Stage) 8,000 19,000 11,000 E. (5th Stage) 10,000 19,800 9,800
It is clear from this example that only by choosing
combination C will the firm manager be maximizing total profits. To be contented with other combinations just because they, too, yield profits would not be optimizing. And this is the case when a fixed mark-up rate is the basis for profit. It is clear also that more sales does not necessarily mean more profits. THE OPTIMUM COMBINATION Example B: Sales Volume Revenue Total Costs Price Profits (units) from Sales (P1 per unit) A P 10 P 1,000 P 10,000 P 1,000 P 9,000 B 8 2,000 16,000 2,000 14,000 C 6 3,000 18,000 3,000 15,000 D 4 4,000 16,000 4,000 12,000 E 2 5,000 10,000 5,000 5,000
Since we assumed that demand is present, a price of P10, though
resulting in less sales volume, yields a profit of P9 per unit. An analysis of various alternatives shows that profits is not maximum in either case. Some price level between these two extremes corresponds to our optimum combination of sales and costs. In our example, this price is at P6 where profit is maximized at P5 per unit. OPTIMIZATION
These examples are hypothetical. Actual
situations are not as simple as these, but they serve to illustrate the concept of optimization.