(3) Price Reduction of Goods
商品降價
Marketing and sales can change the value of inventories.Suppose a company's customers stop buying one of its products or a group of products.When this happens，the items cannot be sold at the price which was set for them.The amount of an item or product which customers buy is called demand.When customers are buying a lot of one product，it is said that the demand is high.When customers stop buying，it is said that the demand is falling or the demand is low.If this happens to a product，the inventory of items in stock may be worth less than the amount shown on the books of account1.Sometimes inventory items are actually worth less than it cost to make them.
"A product is worth only as much as we can sell it for to our customers，"explains Dan，who is director of marketing for the company.Dan is in charge of all sales and marketing for the company.Sally，John，Helen，Steve，Mary，and Sue all work for Dan.Dan is their boss.
Dan was one of the people who came to the meeting on Saturday.The purpose of the meeting was to discuss inventory items which customers were not buying as quickly as the company thought they would.George was interested in these products because inventory values go down when products do not sell.
Companies usually try to keep inventories at a level which is based on sales volumes2.For example，in this company they try to keep inventory levels or values at one quarter of a year's sales.This means that sales for the year should be four times as great as inventory levels or values.Another way of saying it is that the company turns over3 its inventories four times a year.Turnover means that items are brought into inventory，sold，and replaced.Companies say they have a turnover of four.Turnover is also called "turn".People say，"We turn our inventory four times a year."