Well explained. Thanks for taking an intellectual approach.
Thanks. It always brightens my day to receive praise from a Freeper.
Let me offer another example from my own experience.
Since the onset of the illness of my very thoughtful and attentive wife, I find myself more often arranging my own meals. Three or four times a week I'll have Wheat Chex for breakfast. (Whatever happened to Bran Chex, anyway?)
We buy in bulk and on sale when possible since we are frugal and live outside of town. At our local grocery store Wheat Chex is priced at 5.25 per box. It sometimes goes on sale, two boxes for the price of one.
In normal times, I keep us stocked up at sale prices. For some reason it seemed that the sales didn't occur when I needed them. So I shopped around and ended up buying 12 boxes at $3 per box from Walmart, delivered free to my door.
By not offering the product for sale, my local grocer encouraged me to find a better deal. We will still be dealing with that grocer, but we have become better shoppers and the grocer will have to adjust to slightly less revenue. This is what capitalism is all about.
Retailers provide services and products that their customers will buy and they have great latitude in how they price their products. This is a very good thing.