Dear Tutor, Please kindly answer:

Why are wedding gowns typically purchased and worn only once, while tuxedos, which can be worn on multiple occasions, typically rented?

Your response should apply economic principles (e.g., comparative advantage,

opportunity cost, cost-benefit principle) to answering one of the above questions.

Your answer does not need to be correct in that it fully explains the question.

Instead focus on making an intelligent hypothesis that could potentially be tested

and refined. Also avoid using technical jargon for the sake of being technical. Your

response should be able to be read and understood by an intelligent individual with

no training in economics.

This assignment's economic tool:

Cost - Benefit Principle

A significant amount of economic analysis is done under the assumption that

individuals and firms make decisions based on comparisons of costs and benefits.

For example, why do the countries in our models choose to engage in trade? The

benefits of trade outweigh the costs. Similarly, why do consumers choose to

purchase a good or service in the model? They make this decision because their

willingness to pay (the benefits they receive) outweighs the costs (the prices of the

good or service).

A surprisingly large number of counter-intuitive phenomena in the real world can

also be understood using the cost-benefit principle. For example, one way to

answer, "Why do doors in 24-hour convenience stores have locks?" is to think about

the relevant costs and benefits for a firm producing the doors. There is a cost

associated with creating a brand new door with no locks. But there may be a benefit

to the firm to create a door with no lock because they do not have to pay for

additional materials. We may not observe locks on the doors of 24-hour

convenience stores simply because the cost of designing and creating new doors

without locks outweighs the benefits of using less materials on these doors. This is

not the only correct way to answer this question, but it serves as an intelligent

hypothesis based on core economic principles.