Quote:
Originally Posted by JimKal
...Gross dollar figures are deceptive when an eBook may sell for less than a paper book. Two more important figures would be total sales - how many eBooks versus how many paper books, and eBook profits versus paper book profits...
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It astounds me how business still use gross sales figures to indicate activity when, as you pointed out so well, those are deceptive. When I worked in a convenience store, management would judge how busy a shift was by the gross sales made during the shift. Duties varied from shift to shift. The morning and afternoon shifts primarily worked registers. The night shift had less register business and concentrated on cleaning, stocking, and anything the first two shifts didn't get done (which was frequently a lot). The third shifter could have very few customers in a night and still be busier than a one armed paper habger in a stiff breeze. Even number of sales would be inaccurate as an activity indicator was grossly (pardon the pun) inaccurate as an indicator of activity because during the week, one of the biggest movers, alcohol, was typically sold by the can. On the weekend, it was typically sold by the case. It takes the same amount of time to ring up and restock a can (sometimes even more) as it does to ring up and restock a case. Number of sales and gross sales were dramatically higher during the weekend yet they actually weren't as busy as during the week.
When I worked in warehousing, management used the number of transactions in a day to gauge how busy a warehouse was. Never mind one transaction could be handing someone a small part in easy reach, having to spend 15 minutes pulling a part down from a rack, or 30 minutes (or more) delivering a large part somewhere. Not included were normal overhead activities such as logging and putting away incoming stock, conducting mandatory inventory audits, cleaning, loading and unloading trucks, etc.