RRP/list price/retail price and cars?
"The retailer can sell for whatever price they like, with the caveats that if they consistently sell at a loss they will go out of business and if they set the price too high they will not sell anything! As you mentioned, RRP is only a recommended price, the manufacturer cannot enfore it at all for legal reasons. Having said that I used to work in retail (not cars) and if we discounted a certain manufacturers products and they found out about it, we would find they had suddenly run out of stock when we tried to order more. So manufacturers do have some control over this type of thing depending on how ""underhand"" they want to be about it. My background is in retail management but not selling cars, but my understanding is the law regards RRP is the same."
"If the price used to be 2.50 but by the time you get in an order it's 2.80, you're going to have to pay 2.80. You can't say, ""I want to buy it at the price from an hour ago"". If you could, everybody would wait for the price to go up, then buy at the old price and have an instant guaranteed profit. Well, except that when you tried to sell, I suppose the buyer could say, ""I want to pay the lower price from last July"". So no, you always buy or sell at the current price. If you submit an order after the markets close, your broker should buy the stock for you as soon as possible the next morning. There's no strict queue. There are thousands of brokers out there, they don't take turns. So if your broker has 1000 orders and you are number 1000 on his list, while some other broker has 2 orders and number 1 is someone else wanting to buy the same stock, then even if you got your order in first, the other guy will probably get the first buy. LIFO and FIFO refer to any sort of list or queue, but don't really make sense here. When the market opens a broker has a list of orders he received overnight, which he might think of as a queue. He presumably works his way down the list. But whether he follows a strict and simple first-in-first-out, or does biggest orders first, or does buys for stocks he expects to go up today and sells for stocks he expects to go down today first, or what, I don't know. Does anybody on this forum know, are there rules that say brokers have to go through the overnight orders FIFO, or what is the common practice?" Well thats a natural monopoly, nobody needs competition in search engine or social websites, who uses two social websites if one has everyone in it anyway. Learn before you talk.  Some industries are born to be monopolies but the problem that people are arguing is that companies like amazon give you much better prices and deliver stuff to your house. This is different than normal monopoly situation where they increase the price to a higher one than the market equilibrium and cause welfare loss.  In this case for example, amazon actually kills all the retailers which are earning normal amounts of money anyway, uses underpaid workers for more profit, don't pay taxes to us government for more profit and basically takes away money from the buyers indirectly(who are very happy with their new x which was cheaper than retailer price). Okay. They're faster than most other computers. They either have a dedicated fiber line or are physically closer.  But anyways, they flood the NYSE with tons of orders to slow it down. So they see another broker's order in the line up and delete the bogus orders. They can then make the purchase faster than the other guy. The other guy now has to pay a higher strike price than he initially thought the bid would be.   So let's say Apple's quote is 1.00  They send one order for apple  One for IBM  One for Yahoo  One for NBC Comcast  They see another guy wants Apple. So they cancel the orders for IBM, Yahoo and NBC Comcast and leave the Apple one to complete. The Apple one goes through and then they automatically resell it to the guy looking to buy Apple at a price of 1.0001  TLDR  They flood a bunch of orders at a bunch of different prices/quantities. They cancel before it goes through unless they see someone else wants it. If that person wants it they don't cancel.  edit: I don't even know if all or any of those stocks are listed on the NYSE. In today's world it doesn't make a difference anymore. However, replace NYSE with any exchange and the stock with any ticker symbol.  edit 2: They could also manipulate cross listing. Listing the same stock on two different exchanges. Those prices are mostly uniform but of course higher volume on one could mean a higher price on one before they stabilize. So if you can move fast you can buy the stock at the lower price and sell it on the exchange with the higher price. "When you look at those results you'll see that it lists the actual market cap for the stocks.  The ones on the biggest price move are usually close the the $1B capitalization cut-off that they use. (The don't report anything with less than $1B in capitalization on these lists.)  The ones on the biggest market cap are much larger companies. So, the answer is that a 40% change in price on a company that has $1B capitalization will be a $400M change in market cap.  A 4% change on a company with $100B capitalization will be a $4B change in market cap.  The one that moved 40% will make the ""price"" list but not the market cap list and vice versa." Chiming in with other answers that incriminate market segmentation attempts, I would like to offer this Seth Godin video where (among other things) he speaks about breakage, the art of making coupon redemption so difficult that most people get it wrong and do not redeem them. Oh, and when comparing/deciding which/whether to buy, I always use the up-front price. Don't want to encourage the wrong behavior. "I'm not an economist, but I understand the idea of value or ""price"" is purely ""what people agree it to be"".  The quants and analysts I've worked with always talk about ""discovering the price"" - it's an unknown until someone says ""I will pay X"".  Are my 2nd hand Nikes worth $20?  Put em on ebay to find out.  If someone buys them, then yes, 2nd hand Nikes are worth $20.  If they don't sell then they're not worth $20.    Obviously ebay is not the most efficient market out there.  The exchanges attempt to be that with prices varying by fractions of cent in fractions of seconds (milliseconds).  EDIT*   Perhaps another way to look at it is ""What is the 'correct' value of a computer game, say 'Skyrim'?""  Your idea of the value of labour and production costs produces some figure.  But in the real world, what actually happens?  On release day the game is priced at, say, $60.  And lots of people say ""I will pay $60"".  Many people don't, but many people do.  Months later, Steam has a sale and they suggest Skyrim is now worth $30.  Lot's of people who didn't think it was worth $60 do think it is worth $30.  The amount of labour that went into is hasn't changed.  So what it the true or 'correct' value/price of the game?  What is the correct value/price of *amything*? It is *what people will pay for it*." There are companies who sell data gleaned in aggregate from credit card providers to show how much of what category of product is sold online or offline, but that data is not cheap.  1010data is one such data aggregator we are talking to right now. Haven’t seen pricing yet but I expect 6 figures to access the data Any car manufacturer that undercuts their own dealer network would have that network fall apart quickly.  Tesla is using a dealer-free distribution model from the start, so they don't have that problem.  Toyota doesn't work that way, though. GM imposed a uniform no-haggling policy with their Saturn brand, but that policy was coupled with local monopolies for dealers to make it work.  Lexus has also experimented with no-haggling and online ordering (with delivery still taking place at a dealership).  The rest of Toyota doesn't work that way, though. Some car manufacturers, such as BMW and Audi, allow you to take delivery of your new car at the factory for a discount. But even then, the transaction still takes place through a dealer.  Toyota doesn't work that way, though.  For one thing, they work at a different scale.  If you buy a Camry in the US, it might be produced in Kentucky, Indiana, or Aichi, depending on business conditions. You say that you want to cut out the middleman, but the fact is that you do require someone to deliver a Toyota to you, like it or not. If you're interested in saving money, consider trying various well documented tips, such as negotiating by e-mail before showing up, pitting dealerships against each other.  If you don't want to negotiate, you might be able to take advantage of pre-negotiated dealer prices through Costco. You mentioned that the dealership offered you a 7.99% interest rate for your 710 FICO score.  That sounds insanely high — I'd expect deals more like 2% advertised by buyatoyota.com.  (Remember, Toyota Motor Credit Corporation exists to help Toyota Motor Corporation sell more cars cheaply.)  You can also seek alternate financing online (example) or through your own bank.