D is for Demand

To whom it may concern,
Demand is quite an interesting topic. I learned a lot about it in Intro to Business, Marketing 1 and 2, and Advanved Business Procedures. Outside of school, I learned about demand just by being an active consumer in our society. I understood the point of a bargain, and buying more of an item if it is priced at a lower price than usual. I also learned all about demand through my ABP class because I'm in charge of snacks at the student store, but I'll talk about that later when I give REAL LIFE EXAMPLES!!!!!!
In Economics this year, we talked about demand, the law of demand, price effect, demand curves, demand schedules, elasticity and inelasticity of demand, and environmental factors. Whew, that's a lot huh? Demand is basically the desire and or willingness consumers have to buy a certain product. I learned about the boundaries of demand by explaining my dream car and house, which I soon realized was not practical because I'm pretty much the only person who demands that. Next, we talked about the law of demand which basically says the higher you price an item the lower the demand is going to be, and visa versa. I already knew this because if a tank top is $3 compared to $12, obviously more people are willing to buy it at $3. After understanding that concept, we drew lots of pictures of demand curves, making the price the y axis and the quantity demanded the x axis. The demand schedule is a just a table of the demand curve. One column is the price and the other column is the quantity demanded. Due to the law of demand, the demand curves are always sloping downward. After learning all of that we talked about elastic and inelastic demand. Elastic demand is when the price of a product goes up or down, then the consumers buy either less or more of that product. An example of this would be like a fruit roll-up, because if the price goes dramatically up, then people are going to stop buying them, because there are a lot of other products that could substitute for a fruit roll-up, and it's also not necessary for life. Inelastic demand is the exact opposite. That's when if the price of a product goes up or down, generally people are still going to buy the same amount of said product. For example, if the price of milk all of a sudden got drastically low, no one is going to buy a ton of milk because it would go bad. And if the price went way far into the clouds, people still need, so they're still going to buy the same amount. LASTLY, we learned about how environmental factors can change the demand for a certain product. One of the environmental factors was income, so if your income all of sudden goes up, there's going to be a higher demand for basically everything because everyone has more money to spend on products. Another environmental factor was population, so if there was another baby boom, then obviously the demand for diapers, baby food, baby formula, etc. would raise a ton.
Now for connections with the real world. Well, I've already given several examples in my last paragraph, but I'm willing to enlighten you with more of my knowledge. One thing I haven't talked about already are complementary and supplementary products. Complementary products are products that go together, so the demand for both products rises and falls together. An example of this is hot dogs, hot dog buns, napkins, paper plates, chips, soda, etc. Supplementary products are products that come hand in hand, so either one or the other, and the demand for each is like a scale. An example of these kinds of products are tea and coffee, so if all of a sudden there's a shortage of coffee beans, then more people are going to start buying tea as a substitute for the lack of coffee. Also, I learned a lot about demand through my ABP class. I'm in charge of all the snacks at the student store. I have to take inventory of all my products at the end of each week so I know what kinds of products are being sold and which aren't. Then I have to decide why they are either selling or not selling. Some has to do with what the cafeteria sells (SUPPLEMENTARY demand) and some has to do with pricing, which I'm sure is our next lesson in class. Okay that's enough, I'm sure you've learned enough about demand, because I know I sure have!!