Wholesale Price Index - WPI

  

Categories: Econ, Metrics

If you know what a price index is, then we’d guess that your guess at what a wholesale price index is...correct.

A price index tracks the changes in price of a metaphorical “basket” of goods. Price indices use big ol’ averages across entire industries, so they’re more useful for looking at changes in the market over time than for individuals (unless you’re trying to explain to grandpa that real costs in college and healthcare have indeed gone up a lot since he was your age...they’re good for that, too).

The wholesale price index tracks the changes in price in the wholesale basket of goods, i.e. goods before they get shipped off to RetailLand. Like all price indexes, the wholesale price index uses industry-wide averages, comparing one year to a past year (what's called the “base year”). You can compare how much prices have changed in one year, five years, etc. to see what the change was for that time.

While the wholesale price index, or WPI, is pretty common in the world, it’s not in the U.S., which chooses to use the producer price index instead (like the rebellious child that the U.S. is).

See: Price Index.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is wholesale?4 Views

00:00

Finance allah shmoop what is wholesale and well maybe there's

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a better question here What is half sale or a

00:09

part sale No crickets Okay fine You're no fun All

00:13

right you buy a bottle behind to catch up for

00:15

six bucks at the grocery store That's six bucks Was

00:19

the retail price you paid for that ketchup But when

00:22

safeway or kroger's or albertsons bought it they paid something

00:25

more like in four bucks for it The four bucks

00:28

they paid was their wholesale price That is most of

00:31

the time in business Manufacturers don't actually sell their product

00:35

directly to consumers Rather they distribute their products in bulk

00:39

Selling it price is cheaper than retail and then allowing

00:43

the retailer to mark up the price giving that retailer

00:46

enough profit margin teo Well you know exist And this

00:49

makes sense because well heinz is good at managing cheap

00:53

nonunion tomato labor in mexico smashing them up adding vinegar

00:57

removing fly wings and worm thing is bottling storing and

01:02

all the other production things like adding a whole heap

01:04

of helping of sugar And you can't forget about the

01:07

sugar All right so that's what hines is good at

01:09

Making ketchup They're not necessarily good at selling catch up

01:14

at least not directly to consumers like how would they

01:16

do this anyway A website A mail order thing from

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heinz dot com Should they have a big chain of

01:23

pints ketchup drive throughs like who would drive to a

01:26

store to go by a jump You're probably not gonna

01:29

happen So heinz wholesales it's ketchup to grocery stores and

01:32

two convenience stores and tio wal marts and of course

01:36

to the special effects people in hollywood and at magic

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show theaters all around the world Many questions remain as

01:41

to why the unit profit margins on catch up to

01:44

a grocery store are thirty percent whereas capers are like

01:47

eighty or ninety percent and a diet coke is only

01:50

like in a fifteen percent well the answer lies and

01:53

a few key dials that directly turned to map the

01:56

power or leverage each side has in any given to

02:00

go Oh she ation that is Heinz is a brand

02:02

people like and generally seek out but wouldn't die without

02:06

having it in their fridge Well the retailers safeway could

02:09

have its own safeway brand of ketchup and riots would

02:12

probably not break out in the street if they ever

02:14

do Didn't carry hines and you know that well in

02:17

either situation there'd be plenty of fake blood on hand

02:20

Teo manage through those riots right Well the same cannot

02:22

be said of diet coke where for many shoppers if

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the grocery store didn't carry it well they'd simply shop

02:28

elsewhere So if this is the case while then wire

02:31

capers such a huge unit profit margin item to a

02:34

grocery store Why Because there's no sought after brand like

02:38

coca cola And well this is what the last caper

02:41

riot looked like In fact very few capers or ever

02:44

sold So the cost of the quote riel estate unquote

02:47

of however many square inches capers take up on the

02:50

grocery store shelves is very expensive And without high profit

02:54

margins at least per unit sold well the grocery store

02:57

would simply not bother to sell this low turnover Generally

03:00

who cares about jeff item Sorry capers I was just

03:03

keeping it real here So the bottom line is that

03:05

instead of hundreds of millions of customers while then pines

03:07

has just a few thousand to whom they wholesale they're

03:11

fake blood product And yeah it looks like while someone

03:14

just discovered a fifty eighth variety Hey what do you 00:03:17.223 --> [endTime] know

Up Next

Econ: What is the Producer Price Index (PPI)?
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What is the Producer Price Index (PPI)? The Producer Price Index is a composite of thousands of price indexes from sellers of of goods and services...

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