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19 Examples of the Profit Motive

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The profit motive is the desire for financial gain. This is viewed as a basic economic force whereby people who are given economic freedoms will often pursue financial gains such as a high salary, investment returns and business profits. The profit motive is a basic assumption of economics whereby individuals and firms are assumed to be profit seeking. The following are illustrative examples of the profit motive.
A cafe extends their hours and starts serving breakfast in order to increase sales.
A company seeks to produce a higher quality solar panel than the competition in order to increase revenue.
A customer service representative is kind to a difficult customer when they would prefer to tell them what they really think.
A farmer seeks to increase their profitability by selling directly to locals at a farmer's market.
A firm updates a product to remove an unpopular feature in order to prevent customer attrition.
A grocery store stops baking an unpopular dessert and experiments with another in order to try to boost sales.
A hotel responds in a diligent and professional way to customer complaints in order to avoid bad reviews that translate to lower bookings.
A house builder incorporates popular features into their designs in order to boost selling prices.
A manufacturing firm seeks to improve efficiency and reduce costs to improve net revenue.
A restaurant tries to reduce food waste in order to cut unnecessary costs.
A small business fires an employee who is hostile to customers.
A student chooses a major that is likely to lead to job opportunities.
A teacher continues in their career for 40 years in order to build up a pension.
An ambitious musician seeks fortune and fame.
An employee does the minimum required of their job because they don't want to be fired.
An employee goes to work early in the morning to open a bakery when they would naturally prefer to stay in bed.
An employee works hard to earn a promotion.
An investor purchases a stock because they think it will go up.
An investor sells a stock because they think it will go down.

Profit Motive & Capitalism

The profit motive can be viewed as the driving force behind the remarkable innovation, productivity and efficiency produced by the global economy.

Profit Motive & Communism

The profit motive essentially doesn't exist in communism because one of the promises of this system is to force economic equality whereby everyone obtains the same results regardless of contribution, talent or productivity. This helps to explain the relative inefficiency of this system whereby incentives to cut waste, improve, be productive or to improve customer experience may be mostly nonexistent.

Profit Motive & Taxation

Generally speaking, burdensome taxation may decrease the profit motive as it decreases actual rewards for producing or capturing value.
Overview: Profit Motive
Type
Definition (1)
The desire for financial gain.
Definition (2)
The desire for financial gain and growth.
Definition (3)
The assumption in economics that market participants are profit seeking.
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