| dc.description.abstract | The central purpose of a private business is to earn a profit and to
reach this goal, the entrepreneur must be able to sell his product at
the prices as determined by the market or by price control. In our
dinamic age no enterprise, no matter how efficient its organisation,
can be considered as absolutely safeguarded. Com.petition from the
same or similar products is ever present or possible, and a can petitor
may be successful, not necessarily on account of a new or better
product, but because he can produce it cheaper. As a means of
attrackting additional custom, t he appeal to the price motive has been
throughout the ages the trader's most logical and indeed most potent
tactical weapon.
Because it is inevitable that an enterprise will have to live with
competition and price control, it is obvious that the cost price of its
product will be a factor of extreme importance. The enterprise
naturally aims at the maximum profit that can be derived from. the sale
of its products, but this aim can be crippled if relatively high losses
are sustained through lack of proper control. Cost control aims to
discover these losses, to analyse and to eliminate them. The purpose
of this study will then be to analyse the function of cost control in
order to determine its use as a means to enable the enterprise to
eliminate unnecessary losses and to increase profits accordingly.
In chapter 1 some concepts which are used in this script, are defined.
The definitions are necessitated because the Anglo-Saxon influence,
which is based upon the historical cost-idea, has such a great
influence upon South-African industries that confusion in respect of
the nonnative conception, which is being approved of in this script,
may easily occur. | en_US |
