Saturday, August 1, 2009

The Economic Naturalist: Why do 24-hour convenience stores have locks on their doors?

If you are the owner of a 24-hour convenience store, would you think of regularly closing the establishment for a particular time of the day for some reason? Apparently not, for closing half an hour will make it a 23.5-hour Convenience Store. lol. In other words, an owner would not think of closing the store for even a single minute of the day. But why do 24-hour convenience stores have their locks?

Of course our answer would be: "JUST IN CASE..." the store needs to close inevitably during emergency instances. In case the store temporarily runs out of stocks or becomes bankrupt, it has to close. In case no one is able to tend to it, it must also have to close.





While the answer is valid, Robert Frank points out another reason why these stores have locks it is difficult to find or even more expensive to purchase doors without locks. Industrial doors are sold mostly to establishments that are not open 24 hours a day. These establishments obviously have reasons for wanting locks on their doors. Therefore, door makers make doors with locks, thereby making production cost cheaper in following the same process. Making doors without locks deviates from the usual process and therefore needs an assembly line modification resulting to additional cost. Using doors with locks makes negligible cost on oddities compared to the manufacturing cost of those without.