Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu!mart
Newsgroups: ont.general
From: mart@csri.toronto.edu (Mart Molle)
Subject: Re: Sunday shopping
Message-ID: <1989Dec29.123430.15786@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Organization: University of Toronto, CSRI
References: <25900FAC.1DA4@telly.on.ca> <1989Dec21.051318.6564@utzoo.uucp> <697@alias.UUCP> <25999616.7242@telly.on.ca> <1989Dec29.113120.6892@me.toronto.edu>
Date: 29 Dec 89 17:34:30 GMT
Lines: 49

In article <1989Dec29.113120.6892@me.toronto.edu> zougas@me.utoronto.ca (Tom Zougas) writes:
>Someone had brought up the point about malls forcing stores to open.
>I know (for a fact) that the TD Center _forces_ some of its stores
>to be open on Saturday. Saturday is the slowest day for a mall located
>in the basement of a downtown office tower.
>
>Extending this to what would happen if Sunday shopping were allowed
>completely: stores located in malls (and we all know that malls
>are the backbone of urban life :-) would be forced to open on Sundays,
>even if the owners wanted them closed. This is not giving the store-owner
>the freedom of selling his wares when he feels like it.

Ummm, well, wouldn't the store owner have the option of moving his business
elsewhere (to a location where Sunday is either a sufficiently busy to justify
opening, or one that doesn't force him/her to open...)?  Again, this is an
example of a short-term transient.  The mall owner will have to contend with a
drop in rental rates when it comes time to renew all those leases (if the
merchants don't want/can't afford to open on Sundays) because of the law of
supply (of space, which is fixed) and demand (which varies, depending on how
badly the merchants want to open a store in that mall).  Notice that there is
nothing stopping the mall owner from asking for a rent increase even without
changing the shopping hours IF THE MARKET WILL SUPPORT IT; you can bet the
mall owners who choose *not* to open on Sunday would raise their rents to
compensate for the "advantage" of "less overhead" (or be forced to drop their
rates if Sunday turned out to be a "good" day...).  And, even if Sunday shopping
is never approved, those mall owners will happily raise their rates to what
they think they could have gotten for "closed on Sundays" space under the
wide-open shopping system-- after all, what's stopping them?

>                                                        As a matter of fact
>if business is slow on forced days of opening, the owner will be forced
>to raise prices to compensate for the overhead.

I don't get it.  Are you suggesting that there is some unwritten code of ethics
in business that says you set your prices as X% of cost (X > 100), no matter
what?  You set your prices so as to maximize your profits.  If raising prices
would increase your profits (to "compensate for the overhead"), what's keeping
you from raising them *now*, and just pocketing the increase?  Go look up
"elastic" and "inelastic" demand in an economics book, or -- better yet -- go
read "Don't Get Taken Every Time: The Insider's Guide to Buying a Car" by
Remar Sutton.  This is a free market, not rent-control:  sellers make decisions
based on what they think is best for them, and not what is "right" according
to somebody else's metric.

Mart L. Molle
Computer Systems Research Institute
University of Toronto
Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4
(416)978-4928