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Consider a Market Transaction That You Have Undertaken as a Consumer Which Was Notable Because It Is Particularly Recent, Large or Unusual. Analyse This Transaction from a Micro-Economic Standpoint.

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Consider a market transaction that you have undertaken as a consumer which was notable because it is particularly recent, large or unusual. Analyse this transaction from a micro-economic standpoint.

I recently entered a sector of the home entertainment market by purchasing a Playstation 3. The Playstation 3(PS3) is Sony Computer Entertainment’s third video game console which competes in the current seventh generation of consoles alongside Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Nintendo’s Wii.

With the advancement of new technologies such as high definition(HD) and motion sensors it was only natural that consoles would evolve to incorporate these new breakthroughs. The first seventh generation console to be released was Microsoft’s Xbox 360 on …show more content…

(Q1-Q2)/(P1-P2)*(P1+P2)/Q1+Q2)
Taking the sales figures from earlier we have Q1=3.5, Q2=13.9, P1=499 and P2=250
Plugging these figures into the equation gives an answer of -1.798.
Since the value is less than one we can say that PS3s are elastic. This means that an increase in price of 1% will lead to a greater than 1% change in demand.
I also predict that at the current market price this product to be elastic. This is due to the nature of the product. Being a luxury good, customers are more likely to be price sensitive and also the PS3 is against strong competition so if the price were to change in favour for or against substitute goods this is likely to have a strong effect on demand.

Therefore in this case if Sony were to increase the price of the PS3 they would expect to make lower total revenue. This is because the predicted demand for PS3s would be expected to drop more than the percentage increase in price could cover.

In conclusion by looking at the recorded sales figures we can clearly see the real implications of the PS3 high elasticity at work. The high starting retail price combined with a lack of starting complimentary goods projected poor sales which were then recouped by reducing the price and an increase in complimentary goods.

References
*Quantity sales figures were taken from

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