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Heinl Radio News Service
10/31/45
NEW OPA RADIO AND PHONOGRAPH RECONVERSION PRICING METHODS
Reconversion pricing methods for consumer type radios and phonographs were given in detail by the Office of Price Administra¬ tion yesterday in a new regulation covering those items at all levels of sale.
The action, effective yesterday (October 30) covers all new model radios and supersedes existing regulations and prices affecting these models, OPA said.
As announced October 11th, consumer prices will be about what they were in March 1942. Two kinds of adjustment have been made, however, to iron out inequities that had crept into the retail price picture at that time, OPA said.
First, where retail prices in March 1942 included excise taxes newly imposed in October 1941 at the manufacturing level, and pyramided through to the consumer by means of percentage mark-ups at successive levels of distribution, OPA has reduced these retail price to the point where they include only the original dollar amount of the manufacturer’s October 1941 excise tax. This policy has been con sistently followed, OPA explained, on all consumer items on which new wartime taxes were imposed in October 1941.
Second, in cases where retailers, by March 1942, had established individual ceilings higher than those in the manufactur¬ er’s October 1941 suggested list of retail prices, OPA has reduced these prices by the amount of the increase over list. Such price increases did not represent any actual increase in acquisition or distribution costs, OPA said, but served merely to increase margins abnormally.
Through customary retail practices of giving substantial discounts for cash payments, generous allowances for trade-ins, and mark-downs at periodic bargain sales, consumers normally paid con¬ siderably less in pre-war years than the retail prices listed in the manufacturers' catalogues, OPA pointed out. But during the early months of the war, when production was curtailed and consumer buying power already had begun to increase, retail selling prices of many consumer goods gradually rose to the higher levels represented by the manufacturers' lists, OPA said. Many of these increases took place before the price agency was authorized to impose controls.
List prices, not actual pre-war selling prices, are the basis of the retail ceilings that have prevailed during the war, OPA said. On the other hand, increases now being granted to manufactur¬ ers are based on their costs and sales prices in the months before materials scarcities and higher production costs had driven prices above normal peace time levels. Furthermore, the manufacturer in¬ creases granted do not compensate for all cost increases since the beginning of the war, OPA explained, but normally require a certain amount of cost absorption on the part of the manufacturer.
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