Profit Loss

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Profit Loss

by ronnie1985 » Sun Feb 19, 2012 5:00 am
Source: MBA Entrance Exam Prep Book
In order to maintain the price line, a trader allows a discount of 10% on the marked price of goods in his shop. However, he still makes a gross profit of 17% on cost price. Find the profit per cent he would have made on the selling price had he sold at the marked price.
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by optimist.tageja » Sun Feb 19, 2012 6:08 am
Let us assume the marked price of the good be as $130,
he gave discount of 10% + $13
discounted selling price is - $117
he made a profit of 17% on selling at this price - which would be $17
Cost price of the good would be - $100

if he had sold the article for the marked price of $130
he would have made a profit of 30%

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by GMATGuruNY » Sun Feb 19, 2012 7:41 am
optimist.tageja wrote:Let us assume the marked price of the good be as $130,
he gave discount of 10% + $13
discounted selling price is - $117
he made a profit of 17% on selling at this price - which would be $17
Cost price of the good would be - $100

if he had sold the article for the marked price of $130
he would have made a profit of 30%

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This is exactly the approach that I would take.

Here's how to get good numbers to plug in.

When a percent increase from a SMALLER number (the cost price) is combined with a percent decrease from a GREATER number (the marked price), the total percent increase from the smaller number must be a bit greater than the SUM of the two percentages.

Since 17+10=27, the marked price is likely 30% greater than the cost price.
This reasoning leads to the values used in the solution proposed by Optimist:
Cost price = 100.
Marked price = 130.
Discounted price = 117, which is 17% greater than the cost price and 10% less than the marked price.

Thus, (profit at the marked price)/(cost price) = 30/100 = 30%.
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