Is it right if a 10 – year – old child wants a lot of money? I did, that’s why I determined to be a businesswoman as I thought that was the easiest way to be rich. That’s also why I decided to take Economics at higher lever, but it didn’t appear to be an easy subject at all. At the beginning, as I remember, Economics in my mind was only a dry subject with complicated concepts plus dizzy graphs; I didn’t know what the hell Economics was doing in my life. However, after 1 month fulfilled with homework about articles and news, I gradually realized that the most selected subject was not only not as boring as I had thought but also very practical as well.
Such concepts as demand and supply may seem too academic but I just realized that it can also be very close to me. “Demand” is defined as the willingness and ability of a consumer to purchase a given product in a given frame of time. Demand is influenced by many factors such as: price, taste, price of other goods and a few other factors… In usual life, it can be clearly seen. Assumed you really care about beauty, and you go to spa every week. Because of the increase in price of cosmetic or land rental, the cost of beauty-caring service rises, it means you can’t afford for every week and hence you choose to go less instead of paying more. Taste is also another obvious factor. Coke and Pepsi should be a good example for this. Personally I think they are both the same but I still prefer Pepsi, not because of its taste but its motto and the singers or actors representing the brand. Truthfully, I used to drink Pepsi all the time but any other kinds of drink because of Britney Spears. You surely can imagine how great the strength of marketing and advertising are. That’s how the producers and entrepreneurs can affect, even control the demand for a good. Let’s consider further, because the taste of Coke and Pepsi are the same to almost everyone, if you benefit more when purchasing Coke, for sure the demand for coke will dramatically go up. Coke and Pepsi are regarded as substitutes as they can be used as a replacement of each other.
The factor which can change the demand for good but cannot be prevented is the change in total population and the age groups. According to a recent report, the number of university candidate in Vietnam has got higher 40% for the last 20 years, hence there’s greater competitiveness for all students, about which I feel very worried. In addition, there’s never been such a high demand for music player and laptop ever throughout the history, as the young section in the population is greater than ever. It’s also an incentive for the producers to release new collections or designs.
The availability and popularity of a product are determined by the demand trend of consumers. My mother is a secondary teacher, she wanted to make her lectures more appealing and attractive; she made it real by changing the way of knowledge expression and approach as well as the transfer of information and language according to what her students are fond of. That’s why many students love her lectures and hence she is well-paid at school. This may not be very relevant to economics, but it can be an extent of demand and supply that I feel really applicable to my life. My father is the director of a hospital and he made some changes in the service availability to satisfy the patients and their families. However, as a result of the rise in medicines and mechanism, which lead to not only more difficulties of providing enough services but also an unexpected rise in price of those services.
In brief, supply and demand, which are mostly known as concepts and academic knowledge in textbooks can absolutely relate to everyone’s daily life in many different ways. No matter who I will become, what job I will do in the future, I just reckon the most important thing is being able to live your life now and find joys even in the things you are not interested in. That’s what I can learn from the subject I used to hatred but not anymore – Economics.
AGREED!
ReplyDeletei only drank pepsi because of BLUE! A lot of the time, i find myself only buying things that have great advertising. I always find that when i get hold of a magazine, i end up spending more time on the advertisements that anything else. Just to see how they have decided to place the good in this light or position the models modeling the goods just so. How they make it interesting or what kind of image they want to portray for a good. I remember coming across an add or marc jacobs and it was a man in the add modeling women's clothes. This was interesting and definitely caught my attention.
So obviously supply and demand has a great deal to play in constructing the supply and demand for a good but i feel that marketing is a huge part. Is this part of economics too?
I do agree with your point on how taste can affect peoples demands. Companys such as nike advertise by sponsering sport players to wear their goods.Once people see their favourite players wear those clothes they would want to get them to make them feel good, thus demands for nike products might go up.
ReplyDeletehowever taste to a small extent would not help an increase in demand for those products. Though people want these goods, they are usually rather expensive, thus some people are unwilling to pay for those goods and demands decreases
I appreciate your effort in linking economic concepts to the occupation of your parents. How does the increasingly better results of Vietnamese candidates affect demand – are you instead referring to an increase in the supply of qualified candidates for the workforce?
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