Quantity decisions

This vendor's turf consists of the markets dotting downtown where household purchasers still visit for daily necessities. The combined product/service he sells bridges the gap between wholesalers and retailers. With his tools, he wanders markets offering to cut more manageably sized rolls of plastic wrap off of his large "industrial-sized" roll. He sells these smaller rolls to vendors who use the wrap to repackage wholesale-purchased goods for resale to household consumers. His carry consists of: 

1) one industrial-sized spool of plastic wrap (what Americans might call "Saran wrap")
2) one spool upon which to mount the industrial-sized plastic wrap spool
3) one spool with a spike in the middle, around which may be wrapped unfurled plastic wrap
4) one scale
5) several dozen rubber bands
6) a rice bag (now repurposed as his seating) in which to carry it all

For his work method, he places the large spool on his left side, mounts the industrial-sized spool of plastic wrap on to it, "threads" the plastic wrap around the central spike of the other spool, and then spins/kicks the smaller spool continually, causing it to spin quickly and create smaller rolls of plastic wrap out of the industrial-sized wrap. He also sometimes switches from fancy footwork to his hands, spinning his spools almost as one could imagine a DJ "scratching" records on turntables. These smaller wraps of plastic are then tied off with rubber bands, weighed, paid for by the vendors, and eventually used to repackage bulk-purchased/wholesale-bought goods into more consumer-appropriate servings/quantities (such as the bars of yellow soap pictured here). I'm interested in the process of how a retail vendor decides what a fair price is for a given amount of a good - as in, why three bars of soap? What sort of research went into deciding not to package by two or four?

Good for mouth/heart/constraints

The sign on the side of this Bangkok foodcart advertises its "right (for your) mouth, right (for your) heart" crispy (Halal!) non-pork sausage. Space and weight constraints coupled with costly (both monetarily and spatially) combustible fuel, this "arched" grill doubles productivity while halving fuel consumption. Also space-capitalizing is the repurposed Pocari Sweat bottle hung and used as a grease catcher (as the grease is also "recycled").

Cold Gold on the Go

Here, a vendor of the Myanmar street delicacy Shwe Yin Aye ("gold heart/chest cold" or, as my colleague poetically phrases it, "Golden things that cool your heart") exhibits her expertise. The ingredients of this street delicacy are miniscule tapioca pearls, coconut-flavored sticky rice, green spaghetti-like (in texture and appearance, though thankfully not in flavor) strands of jelly, thin slices of coconut-flavored jelly, and a slice of fluffy, sweet white bread, all swimming together in a bath of sweet coconut milk - the weapon of choice for Yangonites young and old against the increasingly unbearable hot season humidity.

Critical to the magic of Shwe Yin Aye is that it is kept cool, which has lead to this vendor to employ a refrigeration system that functions as a compelling goods-display system illustrating their attention to quality to potential customers in this major Yangon market. The micro-glacier suspended in the bed of green jelly strands does triple duty in this space-constrained environment: it simultaneously refrigerates the first of my three orders (hungry colleagues - honest!), chills the bed of green jelly strands it is resting upon, and insures that there is always near-freezing water being generated in order to keep flies from being able to get at the submerged green jelly.

Just as carefully planned as the improvised refrigeration unit was the carrying mechanism for the completed orders. Enough coconut milk to adequately douse all three orders (and then some) in one tightly sealed bag, all other aforementioned components pre-mixed and divided into one bag per order, and everything dropped into a larger plastic bag and placed under ice. All designed to obey fundamental laws of the universe: heat rises, cold sinks, and Shwe Yin Aye must be kept as chilly as possible.

Mobilitea

This mobile tea vendor sells tea out of a modified stroller ("pram"
for Brits) containing his business's accessories: a trio of thermoses
and a bucket of water built into the foot-strap area where a child's
feet would rest. The water bucket contains used glass cups collected
from his more "permanent" (non-mobile) customers, such as market
vendors. Whenever a usual customer sees him approaching, they raise
their glass teacup in a toast of sorts, signaling him to come over and
collect the empty cup in exchange for a fresh glass of tea.

Non-stationary customers such as myself and other customers wandering
through the market at a given moment are provided with a plastic cup
for their tea. Besides the standard plastic/glass cup size, he also
carries a tin cup in the beverage-carrying device mounted on the
handlebars. Equivalent in volume and value to three cups of tea, some
customers who are getting tea for their friends (or perhaps just have
a loooong day ahead of them) opt for the 300 (U$ .40) kyat tin-cup
option. In this case, the tea vendor fills the tin cup from a thermos
and then dumps the contents of the cup into a plastic bag which he
then ties off and hands to the customer.

Each cup of tea is 100 kyat (U$ .15), and each thermos has a 25-cup
capacity. The tea is "regular" flavored (the standard ratio of strong
black tea and super-sweet condensed milk - nothing fancy) and is all
brewed at the tea vendor's house. Working every day except Sunday, he
visits two markets daily, embarking on a 6 AM round to catch the
height of activity in the morning market, and then another round at a
second Yangon market at 2 PM to catch the afternoon slump when people
lust for their daily caffeinated jolt.

Foot-powered video/music vendor

This CD/DVD buyer/seller functions as a mobile media vendor in this town outside of Yangon. Cellphone ownership and internet connectivity in the town is low compared to urban Yangon, but overall wealth is high enough to justify this woman's services. Here, she's pictured  with her "security detail"/assistant salespeople/customers, who perform equal parts advertising, buzz generation/marketing, and plot explanation of obscure movies (in return for the odd kung-fu film she lets them borrow) as she walks around this and surrounding towns. If a disc she purchases is too scratched to work, she hangs on to them to sell later to someone who wants to use them for their reflective properties by attaching them to their bicycle, vehicle, or fence, or to wire LED's to them for the belief that a disc increases the LEDs' brightness.

Seeing as this is her entire livelihood, this woman likely has a very keen understanding of her market's relative awareness/acceptance of various aspects of Myanmar pop culture, and based upon her movie/music stocks and sales figures she can probably forecast with a good degree of accuracy the attributes of movies and songs that are most worth purchasing from families who are selling. As her inventory is limited to what she can carry in her bag, she must carefully apply her knowledge of how a successful/popular movie or album is treated/sold/resold/talked about when making the critical choice of what used media to buy from customers, which to carry with her (based upon the demographics of the community she is entering - age, wealth, etc.), and determining prices.