Juanita is deciding whether to buy a skirt that she wants, as well as where to buy it. three stores carry the same skirt, but it is more convenient for juanita to get to some stores than others. for example, she can go to her local store, located 15 minutes away from where she works, and pay a marked-up price of $103 for the skirt:

2. determining opportunity cost juanita is decidin

store travel time each way price of a skirt
(minutes) (dollars per skirt)
local department store 15 103
across town 30 89
neighboring city 60 63

I would say that the most logical choice for Juanita to make, given the conditions being provided by the question, to answer the question, would be: A: Local Department Store, 15 minutes, 103 dollars.

Explanation:

The reason lies in the fact that, the amount of time in travelling, and the expenses paid in gas consumption for a trip beyond 30 minutes, would more than excede the savings that she would make for the price of the skirt. In the first option, although the price is the highest for the skirt, the time travelled, to go and come back from the department store, is much less than in the other choices, which means much less gas consumed. In the second option, although Juanita would be saving up to 14 dollars, these would be spent in travelling expenses, including gasoline. This is why I would go for choice 1.

The first and the second option might be possible to choose from. If Juanita chooses the first choice, she will save more travel time to the store, yet she has to pay more. Yet, if Juanita chooses the second one, she will pay less money but have to spend more time to travel to the store.  

EXPLANATION

Some people think that deciding an opportunity cost is hard. In fact, it might be easy for others to decide the opportunity cost. The key to deciding the best opportunity cost is knowing what we want and what is a matter more.  

In the case of Juanita, she has two options; save more time to travel or save more money to buy the skirt. If she wants to save more money to buy the skirt, she should choose the second option because of the price of the skirt in the store across the town is cheaper than the one in the local department store. Yet, if she takes the second option, she will lose more time to travel since the store across town requires her to travel for 30 minutes. It takes 15 more minutes to travel to the store across the town than to the local department store.  

If Juanita wants to save more time to travel to buy the skirt, she should choose the first option since it requires her to travel for just 15 minutes to the local department store. Yet, the consequence is, she has to spend more money to buy the skirt because the price of the skirt in that local department store is more expensive than the second option, in the store across the town.  

In conclusion, it is up to Juanita whether she will take the first option or the second option because both of those options have its own opportunity cost. If she wants to spend less money, she can go to the store across the town. If she wants to spend less time to travel, she can choose the first option.  

LEARN MORE:  

If you’re interested in learning more about this topic, we recommend you to also take a look at the following questions:

1.Suppose your friend is strong on defense and insists we must bolster our national defense, whatever the cost. how can you use economic logic to make him or her aware of the opportunity costs with his or her objective?  

2.What is the opportunity cost of saving money to purchase a car?

KEYWORDS: opportunity cost, deciding opportunity cost, chosing opportunity cost  

Subject: Social Studies

Class:  College

Sub-chapter: Opportunity cost      

answer; fulfilling a goal of the president's council of physical fitness and sports;