group 1 drama synthesis (:

Our first idea for the play was to show the relationship between buyers and sellers. But with some thought, we have decided that this may be too broad for a couple-of-minute play, so we limited our topics to:
1. How elasticity affects the sale of a particular market;
2. The behavior of sellers, especially when trying to get customers to buy from them;
3. The factors which affect buyers’ decision (e.g. price, price of the related good, quality of product, budget, taste, and expectation); and
4. A monopolistically competitive market.

Because we want to make it as realistic as possible but at the same time simple to understand, fun, and a bit musical, we decided to do it in a simple way, setting the play in a “tiyangge” and putting two stalls for blouses and another two for pants which represents the market for blouses and pants. We placed two for each to represent the many sellers for both markets, which, at first look, might sell the same products but has slight difference/s when looked closely (monopolistically competitive markets).. To make it more fun and more realistic, we all decided that sellers should do exaggerated things to sway the buyers to buy their products, just like what we experience in “tiyangges”. And to show that the buyers consider factors when buying, the dialogues between the buyers, and between the buyers and sellers showed that their budget, the price of the items they were eying, the price of the related product from the other stall, and other factors have effects on their decision as to what to buy and where to buy. On our play we have, hopefully, also showed that the more elastic a product, the less the sellers would earn if they raise the prices. That is why “tawad” in “tiyangges” are very much visible in our play, emphasizing that because the products sold are elastic -- substitutes are readily available -- a slight change in the price or in other factors would greatly affect the buyers’ decision in buying that particular product.

Here are some additional points we hope we made clear in our play:
1. Market is a Place for Decision Making
As we all know by now, market is a group of buyers and sellers of a particular good or service. And in a market, decision-making is inevitable not only for the part of the buyers, but also for the sellers. In our play we showed this by portraying buyers arguing with their selves, with each other, or with the sellers to help them decide what to buy, and factors such as those already mentioned above playing in their minds which also helped decide what kind of pants or blouse to buy and what stall to buy from. In the sellers’ part, we showed that they too are deciding by portraying that sellers make moves such as serenading their possible customers (which doesn’t happen much in the real world, but you get our point) and lowering the prices of their goods, which requires decision-making, to attract those possible customers to buy their product instead of their competitor’s.

2. Sellers are Risk takers
As you can see, in our play sellers would do pretty much anything to persuade the buyers to buy their product – serenading them in public and embarrassing themselves, giving the customers discounts, and, sometimes, even lie to the buyers about their products just so they can sell them. They are risk takers because they need to sell their products to earn money.
3. Learning is an Earning.
This line stresses the importance of learning economics and the application of it in the real life. We may not learn it from the inside of a classroom or in a proper place, but learning it from the street or just the principles of it is a great learning for all of us.

Group 1 cutie economists :)