Concept in Definition ABC
Miscellanea / / July 04, 2021
By Cecilia Bembibre, in Mar. 2010
The term cost refers to the amount or figure that represents a product or service according to the investment of both material, workforce, from training and the time it took to develop it. As can be seen, the term is characteristic and central to the economic sciences since it is the point from which any type of exchange or economic relationship between two parties. The cost is what the person who wants to receive a product or service must pay in order to have it under the possession of him or his provision.
Today, the cost of a product or service is expressed in most situations in terms of money or capital (which may vary in currency according to the region or space in which the exchange). However, in ancient times and for a long time, Humanity carried out its commercial and economic exchanges through the delivery of other elements such as spices. The cost of the products was then set at the equivalent of the cost of a given quantity of spices.
The cost of a product or service is not a number chosen by
random. Normally, and so that whoever sells it can obtain a gain minimum, it must take into account different elements that are added and that make its development. In this sense, the cost of a pen can be not only the material in which it is made, but also the labor, the time invested in its realization, the knowledge or training that the person should have to do it, the transport to the point of sale, packaging, etc.Today, due to the development of impressive markets for consumption that request more and more products, minute by minute, prices remain accessible in the sense that all that cost is shared by the large number of items produced and sold. Otherwise, the final cost of a pen would be much higher than what is actually paid for it.
Cost Issues