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The economics speak in this is just wrong: A cashier is a marginal cost... for a convenience store to sell one more item requires some amount of ti
by femto113 9y ago
The economics speak in this is just wrong:
A cashier is a marginal cost... for a convenience
store to sell one more item requires some amount of
time on the part of a cashier, and that time costs
the convenience store operator money.
Since the cashier is paid regardless of whether the item is sold they are not a marginal cost in this context. If anything other than a publicity stunt Amazon Go is instead an effort to increase employee productivity, similar to grocery stores putting in self-checkout kiosks where two employees can supervise 10 to 20 kiosks instead of staffing one traditional checkout lane.
- ghaff 9y ago>Since the cashier is paid regardless of whether the item is sold they are not a marginal cost in this context. They're not a marginal cost but they are mostly a variable cost. Cost accounting is tricky. Most things aren't pure fixed costs or pure variable costs but cashiers are pretty close to the latter.