Why landed cost is the only comparable price
Shipping, handling and thresholds mean sticker price comparisons are frequently wrong. Landed cost is the number that decides purchases.
Sticker price is the number sellers advertise; landed cost is the number the buyer pays. In categories with meaningful shipping — furniture, appliances, anything heavy — the gap routinely reverses the ranking.
It is also non-linear. Free-shipping thresholds mean the effective cost of an item depends on what else is in the basket, and a comparison that ignores that is accurate about the wrong thing.
Practical rule: rank on landed cost, but carry sticker and shipping as separate fields. Collapsing them loses information you cannot recover, and some buyers genuinely need the sticker figure.
Where a seller does not expose shipping, say so on the offer. Assuming zero is the single most common way a comparison quietly becomes wrong.
Keep reading
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