Single-product stores?

[Vlasta]

I have a question regarding the distribution of sales of different products. Let's assume I produce and sell two products from the same class (for example, cold and headache pills) in a sufficiently large and wealthy city. How should I sell them properly?

Option 1) Build 2 drug stores, sell only cold pills in one and headache pills in the other.
Option 2) Build 2 drug stores, sell both cold and headache pills in each of them.

Is there a difference between the two options in terms of sales amount? Assuming both stores have the same traffic index, and I'm neglecting the possibility of a more effective layout of a single-product retail store. Does the distance between them play any role? (in other words, does it matter if I set up a chain of pharmacies across the city for easier access, or does stacking them together work just as well?)

[counting]

I have a question regarding the distribution of sales of different products. Let's assume I produce and sell two products from the same class (for example, cold and headache pills) in a sufficiently large and wealthy city. How should I sell them properly?

Option 1) Build 2 drug stores, sell only cold pills in one and headache pills in the other.
Option 2) Build 2 drug stores, sell both cold and headache pills in each of them.

Is there a difference between the two options in terms of sales amount? Assuming both stores have the same traffic index, and I'm neglecting the possibility of a more effective layout of a single-product retail store. Does the distance between them play any role? (in other words, does it matter if I set up a chain of pharmacies across the city for easier access, or does stacking them together work just as well?)

The answer for the second question is easier, nearby stores can boost each other with traffic, so cluster them in high land value area is better. Currently there's no store coverage mechanism yet, it all depends on traffic index (it might be changed in the future with city simulation expansion pack, we already have a preview of new services that have coverage setting).

The answer for the main question is more complicated, but almost always it's better to separate them in different stores. The first reason is each store has a limited traffic, i.e. limited amount of customers passing by, so two stores means twice the potential customers. Second reason is each sales-unit has limited throughput (at low level), hence twice the outlets in two stores means twice the capacity to service potential customers. Third reason is that there's a slight boost for traffic index when there are more products in a store (if the market hasn't been saturated yet, and two stores haven't started to compete for total customers). And finally for the most part its efficiency reason, when a sales unit reaching lv 9, it can usually service enough customers in a 100 traffic index spot (when product rating is reasonable), hence specialized store will be mostly empty of space (or mostly idle) in 3x3 grids, but you still need to pay the same overhead.

I've done an experiment and attached the save files. You can find my Lipstick and Hair color cosmetic stores with one save dedicated to one store each, and the other separated. They show all the effect I mentioned above (I gave them the same selling capacity with 2 sets of sales to each product regardless of the settings, hence this variable is isolated in the test). the store only selling hair color or lipstick clearly covers less over all market share, due to limited traffic (unless you can find a 180 traffic index area, or a city with just 1/3 of the size of current population), and dedicated stores have less traffic index than separated stores (57 vs 60) in the end. You can also tell the difference by comparing the individual firm financial reports of these two sets of stores. Separate stores clearly have better income per month overall. But of course, if a city's demand is small enough (population is small and product rating ls low enough), and these stores are in identical super high traffic index area that can attract the entire customer demand in a city, then theoretically these two options can have the same result (however, these restrictions are obviously not practical in a normal game).

P.S. this analysis is for the latest version of CapLab (2.6.34 right now), not necessarily the case for the original Cap2 (or other earlier versions). In old Cap2, there's an exploit where you can have exceedingly high demand in a monopoly store in a city, hence specialized store might actually be more profitable (this "bug" predates traffic index mechanism), and probably causing the confusion over the years.

[Vlasta]

Oh, nice. Thanks a lot for your response.

[Gentoo]

The real answer is single product stores are better, simply because it would be WAY too monotonous to do it any other way. You will likely have multiple stores in the same city selling the same product near the start of the game, as one store doing nothing but that one product won't take the whole market. You then have to balance the price at both places, as there doesn't appear to be a way to equalize your selling price for a product between all stores.

When playing this game I usually really enjoy setting up my first few product lines and then get very bored with all the busy work that sets in so quickly as I grow. So I give up and come back and start over months later after I forgot how bad it gets.

[KopOut]

You then have to balance the price at both places, as there doesn't appear to be a way to equalize your selling price for a product between all stores.

If you go to the product detail page (in the information menu) and filter to your corp, you can view the products you sell by city. If you have multiple stores selling the same product in the same city, simply pick one, adjust the price to whatever you want and then hit "apply all." That will change the price in all of your stores in that city selling that product.

Not sure if that helps you.

[Ruhani579]

That was a great information.

[Kilo_SSK]

Okay, thanks for the explanation, that's a little bit counter-intuitive as IRL stores tend to sell everything in the same field (for example, hardware stores sell drills, nails, light bulbs, flower pots and linoleum), but if that's more efficient in game, why not?