The main reason why people do business is to make a profit. Ethics has a big role to play in the long-term success of the business, but some people are controlled by greed, and they end up losing their potential customers.
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In businesses, we must find a way to strike a balance between ethics and profit; we must not let our ethics stop us from making more money, and we must always make sure our desire for more money doesn't eat us up to the extent that we will throw caution to the wind and start overcharging.
I used to have this vendor who happens to be my coursemate. She sells clothes, and I do buy from her. In the beginning, her clothes were still buyable, not cheap but at least not too expensive, so I did patronize her until one day.
She posted some shirt on her status and I love them and I dmed her to ask for the price so I can get one or two but the price she called shocked me, she said the shirt was 18 000 Naira!, meanwhile I bought a shirt having the same design as the one I just want to buy for 5 000 Naira a year before that day. I tried negotiating with her, and she said her last price is 14k, which I still find too expensive for one piece of cloth, so I didn't buy from her.
Two months later, I was discussing with a friend, and the conversation led us to where I could get cheap clothes. And she mentioned Balogun market and Yaba market as the best places to go. Yaba market was closer to my place, so I decided to visit the market the following week.
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I saw the same clothes that the vendor was calling 18k there, and guess what, the price was 6k! That was the last time I patronized the vendor because she was no longer acting like a trader, I see her as an exploiter, the annoying part of this is that she is an online vendor, she doesn't have those cloth she posted, what she does is collect the money from her customer then visit the same Yaba market to pick the clothes which cost her less than 500 naira Tf, and then we meet in school and I collect my package, isn't 12000 gain too much for one single shirt? Well, she lost a customer because of her greed.
Recently, a lot of vendors were complaining online because one TikTokker exposed the warehouse they used to get the things they sell, and that was where it was discovered that they charge an insane amount from their customers. They sell goods they bought for 30k in the warehouse to their customers at a price above 100k, greed at its best... Now no one wants to patronise them again, and even customers are now wise and are going to the main place to get their stuff.
In businesses, Ethics is more important because in the long run, we win the heart of our customers and they stay loyal to us, knowing they can trust us due to how we have been on our best behaviour and never try to exploit them. Profit is certain once we have loyal customers, and it is also better to have 100 loyal customers and gain the normal profit from them than to have 5 customers we try to exploit, cos once they figure out they have been exploited, you will lose them too.
Just call me Burl.
I am a professional gamer, motivational speaker and a crypto enthusiast
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God exists, I am a living testimony
Giving up is not an option, every hustler has a payday
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