Pricing Your Goods

This activity sets the stage for a series of short lessons by introducing a scenario designed around the curriculum developer’s industry experience as a retail buyer for a major department store. The business context is that students are asked to select toys that will be sold by their store and use markup and pricing formulas in their role as buyers. Yearly raises are based on our meeting or exceeding gross margin goals. Strategic pricing and markups are crucial to meeting a department’s gross margin goals. Thus, in these problems, students will learn business vocabulary and how to use percentages, decimals, multiplication, and division to calculate retail and markup prices.  This resource was developed as part of the Career Math Toolbox — a compendium of math problems created by teams of educators and industry professionals illustrating the use of math in a variety of careers. Each problem includes an introduction for educators that describes the math used and the College Readiness Standards and Grade Level Expectations that are addressed by the problem. Each problem also includes a brief description of the career field exemplified by the math scenario. Problems also include a brief description of the career field exemplified by the math scenario. Additional problems in the Toolbox are available at www.pc3connect.org/projects/tranmath.html