In a perfectly competitive market, both producers and consumers have a complete understanding of commodities, and the two sides reach a transaction at a balanced price in the market through bargaining. Although the perfect competition market only exists in theory, it does not exist in practice, but relatively speaking, the glasses industry is close to the perfect competition market. The competition between manufacturers and optical shops is fierce. There are many brands in the middle and low-grade glasses market, but they are miscellaneous and small, with little difference in products and advertising methods, and the flow of resources is quite free. Therefore, the low-end market of the glasses industry is close to the perfectly competitive market. In the case of shopping around or even shopping around, the transactions reached usually reflect the true wishes of buyers and sellers, so what about profiteering?
In the high-end glasses market, proprietary technology, proprietary service and proprietary management will all form a brand effect. The high added value and huge profits generated by brand effect are also two different things. It is the most normal phenomenon in market competition for enterprises to seek higher profits by using their accumulated resources instead of natural monopoly. If manufacturers are unilaterally required to reduce profits and cancel any form of innovation, then there will be no brand, no service and no promotion in the market, and they will completely regress to the form of the primary market.
Modern market is not a completely competitive market in theory, mainly because the information of buyers and sellers is incomplete. Glasses is also an industry with asymmetric information. Under the existing conditions in China, price uncertainty caused by information asymmetry is a very common phenomenon in all walks of life. It can be said that in today's extremely rich material products, the information held by consumers is still quite limited, and there will be information asymmetry between customers and producers in almost every industry, so there are individual phenomena of so-called profiteering in almost every industry. But incomplete information does not mean that customers have no information at all. Customers should have a basic understanding of the general quality and price of products in the market. Modern precision production is an important reason for many high-tech enterprises to win the market. Even for products with the same style and material, manufacturers can make high-end goods better and more exquisite. This difference seems subtle, but it is technically demanding. But the average customer has the ability to identify. Economists have long proved that the real way of buying and selling in the novel Hundred Flowers Garden is illogical in reality. The media should not hold such kind and naive ideas. Buying and selling is a game between two parties, which is the charm of the market. In the process of this game, brand-name stores are honest and credible. Huge profits are only an individual phenomenon, only a short-term behavior. The general profit rate is universal.
From the perspective of industry characteristics, except for some high-end glasses, there are not many products in the market cultivation period. At present, some advanced technologies that are vigorously promoted have actually reached the maturity of the market. For example, resin lenses were introduced to China as early as 1980s, while the progressive multifocal technology used in old glasses was invented in 1950s. There is no profiteering at this stage of the product life cycle. The whole enterprise group in China has experienced the transformation from planned economy to market economy, and it has long passed the era when good projects and products can make money in the market. At present, it is in the enterprise stage with low and normal average profit rate. At this time, traditional industries that are closely related to our lives, such as glasses, say that there are huge profits, which is incredible.
Second, the basic situation of the general profit rate of the glasses industry
The result of unannounced visits is usually a simple comparison between the production cost of small workshops and the price of regular optical shops. Without scientific calculation, the basic data is untenable, and the conclusion of evaluation based on some individual phenomena is false. We need to go deep into the production and operation of R&D to understand the value of this industry.
Nowadays, glasses are high-tech products integrating various advanced technologies. The material requirements of spectacle frames are relatively high, and the processing is difficult. For example, the production of metal spectacle frames includes more than 100 processes, and domestic standard manufacturers are very strict in technical control. Lenses also vary greatly due to different materials and processes. For example, the driving mirror lens is made of PC material (polycarbonate), which needs special technical treatment according to the use requirements. Take the driving mirror with the market price of 300 ~ 400 yuan as an example. The ex-factory price of a pair of lenses is 80 yuan, and the frame is 200 yuan. The profit rate is only about 25%.
Glasses are a special commodity, unlike some products, which can be put into use after simple assembly. Customers should match a pair of suitable glasses, from the lens and frame factory to the customer's use, but also through optometry, processing, adjustment, review and other links. So selling glasses is completely personalized service. Under the standard technical conditions, the optometry time is between half an hour and one hour, and the complicated and difficult cases are about two hours. It is generally estimated that the optometry cost is about 50 ~ 100 yuan, and the processing cost is about 25 ~ 30 yuan. However, there are many good lens processing procedures, and the time cost is also rising. Mass-produced lenses have myopia 1000 degrees and astigmatism of 200 degrees. If it exceeds this range, glasses lenses need to be customized, and the processing time should be 3 days to 1 week. Special needs even need to be processed abroad. Because optometry and processing are complex technical activities, the reflected value needs to be further calculated (the cost of optometry in the United States is about 30-50 dollars, and it is about 200-700 Hong Kong dollars in Hong Kong), but in China, free optometry and processing are generally used as selling points to attract customers, and their value is hidden.
For standard chain stores, the gross profit margin of invisible products is about 30%, and that of frames and lenses is about 50%. We also want to reiterate that part of the reason for this high profit rate is that optometry and processing costs are mixed in the price. Assume that the gross profit margin of the business can be maintained at around 50%. After sharing the operating costs, the expense structure is as follows: rent accounts for 14 ~ 16% of the turnover, labor cost is about 13 ~ 14%, marketing expense is about 6 ~ 8%, depreciation of fixed assets is 3%, value-added tax 17% and value-added tax is 50%. In good times, the net interest rate is as low as 3.5%, and in bad times, it even loses money.
For production enterprises with low gross profit margin, the cost related to technology development is a very important expenditure. At present, the design of glasses and the research and development of materials are fiercely competitive, and the technologies of comfort and vision control are constantly emerging. Optometry is the focus of research and development, which integrates optics and ophthalmology. It has a history of one hundred years, but for China, it was not taken seriously until around 1985, and its important driving force came from enterprises. Generally speaking, in order to compete with foreign advanced enterprises, the self-developed glasses production industry must increase all kinds of investment and make a lower net profit. Take a large-scale production enterprise as an example, the annual output of lenses160,000 pairs, frames of 30 million pairs, sales1600 million, profits and taxes of 20 million, profits160,000, and net profit rate of about 654.38+00%. Earn about 8 cents per pair of glasses on average. Can only rely on mass production to make profits, but most enterprises simply can't reach this level.
At present, national optical enterprises, whether optical shops or production enterprises, are relatively small in scale and strength compared with similar foreign enterprises. Revitalizing the national glasses industry requires the joint efforts of the whole industry, carrying forward the pioneering and innovative spirit, rationally utilizing funds, actively implementing the famous brand strategy, and making the industry bigger and stronger.
Third, use disasters to make huge profits.
Excessive promotion of profiteering in the industry is extremely unfavorable to the development of the industry. Accusing individual profiteering in competitive industries is equivalent to industry profiteering, which will mislead consumers to make logical mistakes together, and then mislead the concept of consumption, with terrible consequences. This will have a key impact on consumers' understanding in the following aspects, and even affect those customers who lack judgment: most optical manufacturers are small workshops; Most optical shops purchase goods from these small workshops; The profits of the whole industry are several times and dozens of times; The technical content of optometry glasses is very low, which plays little role in the process of buying glasses. In this way, according to the psychology that consumers want to buy the maximum value at the lowest price, because the profits of the whole industry are amazing, the more expensive they buy, the easier they are to be fooled, and more and more customers will buy low-grade and low-value glasses; Since the glasses sold by standard optical shops and non-standard shops are the same, and there is no difference in technical services, it is better to go directly to small shops to bargain or buy glasses with big discounts; Because the process of optometry and processing is not important, most optical shops have similar services, so optometry will do. This will cause more customers to flock to low-grade and low-tech optical shops with no guaranteed service, and some customers may even buy assembled and marked glasses directly. This has caused the abnormal phenomenon that "bad mirrors drive out good ones" in the market.
"Bad mirrors drive out good mirrors" is extremely beneficial to those businesses that are not standardized and pursue profiteering. They won more customers. Because bargaining is common in this kind of market, customers can't get effective guarantee about product information, so it is more convenient for these businesses to shoddy, seek high prices and pursue huge profits. At the same time, the victims are standardized merchants and customers. Unscientific negative reports lead customers to distrust merchants, the standardized services of merchants are not recognized, and the value provided by excellent technologies is seriously underestimated, so they either participate in vicious competition, reduce their own costs, reduce their technical level and service quality, or withdraw from the market. The extreme case is that there are only unqualified products on the market. The situation of customers is even worse, because they are increasingly reluctant to choose quality products and services. Unqualified optometry or simply not optometry leads to wearing glasses further affecting vision and endangering health. If we follow this trend, illegal businesses will prevail and regular businesses will suffer greatly, which will form a vicious circle. At present, some regular optical shops report that bad reports lead customers to distrust the optical industry, and even there is a farce that property companies take the opportunity to collect rent from optical shops, which damages the image of the optical industry and interferes with normal business activities.
In the market economy, consumers' rights protection means not only mastering more product knowledge, but also mastering some basic economic knowledge. Some media people confuse the concepts of cost and income in their reports, equating ex-factory price with cost and selling price with income, comparing the lowest cost price of low-grade products with the highest retail price of high-grade products, and analyzing them by extremely simple means, resulting in people's incorrect understanding of profits. We should help consumers establish a correct economic outlook, not help them establish "profiteering panic" and "profiteering hatred". When we look at a commodity, we should not only look at its material cost, but also think about what necessary links it will go through when it is really owned by customers, its use comfort, the cost of fashionable and beautiful development, its brand value, whether it has been reprocessed, sales expenses, etc. These are all important and even key reasons for the deviation between commodity price and cost. In the modern market economy, the focus of enterprise competition is increasingly divorced from the real cost of goods (that is, the so-called core products in marketing), and more and more focused on the provision of added value of products. The added value of supporting services provided by enterprises for commodities has far exceeded the material cost of commodities. Consumers in modern society agree with the concept of cost-benefit in pre-industrial society, which is contrary to the conventional economic laws.
2004 was an extraordinary year for the glasses industry. In fact, long before the "profiteering" propaganda pushed the glasses enterprises to the forefront, the glasses production and sales licensing system known as "Shen Jia Storm" entered a strict and comprehensive implementation stage in April 2004. On the basis of deepening the connotation of industry value, the glasses industry will regulate itself and provide more satisfactory services for consumers.